Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park

The Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park is located at Main Castle in Victoria, Australia, about 120 km from Melbourne. This park is listed as a cultural monument in the Australian National Heritage List since January 27, 2005 and protects an area of approximately 7,480 hectares in the park there are significant historical legacies of an Australian gold rush of the early 1850s. Originally, the gold field was named after the local mountain, Mt Alexander.

History

The first gold rush in Bendigo Australia in New South Wales and Ballarat in Victoria took place from June 1851. When Christopher Thomas Peters, the owner of a small sheep farm, the gold deposits at Mount Alexander discovered he did not want to make this known. Thomas and three of his friends broke within a month with a hammer and chisel golden material in the value of annual earnings from the rock. However, the secrecy could not be maintained and there were not only many gold miners from the first Australian gold fields, but also from England, Europe and America. 1852 already 30,000 people lived in the area of ​​Castlemaine gold deposits. For comparison: in 1848 yet counted the population of Victoria 77,000 people. 1852 was the Castlemaine gold field as the largest on Earth. 1854, the first Chinese gold miners came to the goldfields of Castlemaine. They left a cemetery, the Vaughan Chinese Cemetery, and the place of Chinese Market Gardens. The Chinese cemetery was occupied until 1857.

This immigration people came into the country, who brought new knowledge, new jobs and new cultures to Australia. With the gold-digging, immigration and the resulting wealth, the number of inhabitants of Australia skyrocketed, which was for the economic prosperity of Australia until the early 1890s and even beyond significantly.

The park shows how the early gold rush changed the surface of the landscape through excavations, roads and Wasserrinnenbau, dams, storage and fire places and huts. The gold field has many forms of early gold mining in Australia, which otherwise may be issued in Australia in this range of nowhere, as the first gold fields have been overbuilt in Ballarat and Bendigo cities.

Over time, the reduction techniques and also the economical investment and business models in the Castlemaine gold field changed. 1965 ended the gold mining. Up to this point, about 5.6 million ounces of gold were recovered in this area.

Furthermore, in the park, the geological and geomorphological basis of the gold deposit is recognizable.

Before the discovery of gold there were numerous violent conflict between the white settlers and the Aboriginal people of the Dja Dja Wurrung. As the prospectors came to this area, most of Dja Dja surviving Wurrung had been deported in 1841 in the Loddon Aboriginal protectorate station at Franklin Ford between Castlemaine and Daylesford.

Despite the large earth moving traces of the original Dja Dja Wurrung living there are largely preserved. Today, the grounds, despite the deforestation for firing steam engines and for heating of the in- quartz gold - to solve it - again overgrown by trees. The trees now form a part of the typical Victorian Box - Ironbark forests and prevented the erosion that would have destroyed the historic sites.

Park access

The park is open to the public, it can be hiked there and there are campsites. The park contains over 500 plant and 100 animal species, including many species of birds.