Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Thursday 25 May 1882, page 9


THE FIRST NATIVE GOLD IN

MELBOURNE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ARGUS.

Sir,—As the curiously interesting question as to how and when the first Victorian gold made its appearance in Melbourne has been recently ventilated in the correspondence columns of your journal, I will thank you for permission to add a brief contribution to the

discussion.

The first intimation the Melbournians had of the probability of the existence of the pre-cious metal in Port Phillip was in 1845, when a Mr. David Howie, a resident at King's Island, picked up amongst the rocks there a few metallic lumps the size of a pigeon's egg. Thinking they were gold, he hastened with his treasure to Melbourne, where the "eggs"

were ascertained to be iron ore and the finder was laughed at, and returned home sadly dis-appointed.

One day in March, 1847, a shepherd entered the shop of a Mr. Forrester, a jeweller, in Collins-street, and exhibited some metal, which he desired to have tested. It was a sample as big as an average apple, and the shepherd thought it was copper. He said he had found it amongst the roots of a tree blown down by the wind, at a place some 60 miles from Melbourne, where there was plenty more like it ; but the precise where-abouts he declined to disclose. Forrester applied some tests, when the specimen proved to be a veritable golden apple, inasmuch as it contained 65 per cent of pure gold. Forrester became its possessor, and the shepherd left, promising to soon return with a larger quan-tity, but for some never-discoverable reason did not keep his word. There happened to be in Melbourne at the time a well-known Cap-tain Clinch, the master of the Flying Fish, a popular craft which traded between Melbourne and Hobarton, and Forrester being on terms of intimacy with him presented him with a slice of the " golden apple, " but to news-papers or no one else did he appear to have imparted any intelligence of his transaction with the shepherd. Upon Clinch returning to Hobarton, he was more open-minded than the Melbourne jeweller, for he communicated the facts as I have detailed them to the Hobarton Courier, and it was the receipt of that journal of the 19th May, 1847, which informed the Mel-bourne newspapers that gold was indigenous to Port Phillip. They shrugged their shoulders, opened their eyes, stared incre-dulously, and were disposed to treat the whole thing as a hoax.

No further gold intelligence turned up for more than a year, but in July, 1848, another

shepherd put in an appearance with a paper of what he declared to be gold-dust gathered as he protested under a tree only a few miles out of town, but the locality he would not name. On examination the sample did con-tain a small proportion of gold.

About the same time a shepherd boy called at the shop of Mr. Robe, a jeweller in Col-lins-street, and displayed some gold, which he alleged had been found by him at the Pyrenees, but it was a very poor specimen.

In January, 1849, the startling intelligence of the golden wonders of California created an intense sensation in Melbourne, and there was a partial exodus to the Eldorado.

It was during the same month that another shepherd boy, named Thomas Chapman, made his appearance at the jeweller Bren-tani's with some gold he had picked up at the Pyrenees. Brentani had the metal assayed by a Mr. Duchener, who adjudged it to be the real thing. With Brentani and Duchener might be said to have commenced the gold hunting which led to the discovery of the regular goldfields by the Esmonds, the Bruhns, the Campbells, and others. This early gold-questing is the most amusing episode in the early history of the colony, but to write more about it at present would neither accord with my time nor your patience. —Yours, &c.,

GARRYOWEN.

May 24.