AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2574, 18 May 1871, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

It was exactly Tuesday, twenty years ago, that gold was first discovered at Ballarat, the date ou which the first gold was dug out.of the earth by Hiscock, being the 11th April, 1851, at a spot near Buninyong. : His'ccCk was afterwards rewarded -by the Victo n i u Government by a money grant of LSOO, Then he set up as a storekeeper; made a large amount of money, the whole of which he lost by subsequent profitless speculations. The exodus from Geelong was so complete (hat only about three of the maie adult population remained in it, in 1852 the gold brought down by escort from the Ballarat district avenged 49,000 dunces per week, ; a yield which before in California, or since in other parts of the auriferous districts of the world has never even been approached. < f all the miner’s, tradir*, and merchants who flourished iu those prosperous times, not half-a-dozen escaped the reaction which took place in 185(1, when the insolvencies in eleven months cxceded over twelve millions of money.

Launceston is invested by gangs of thieves, Bobberies are very frequent.