You heard it here first folks, the innovative new website for buying and selling gold in real time, 24/7 has arrived – LinGold.com.

The site offers free Membership and you join a worldwide community of fellow gold investors buying and selling gold to each other. There is “Good Delivery” gold bullion and a large variety of professionally sourced Gold Coins – Bullion Coins like the South African Krugerrand, The Australian Nugget, The American Eagle, The Canadian Maple Leaf, The Chinese Panda and The British Britannia. There are also many semi-numismatic coins like the British Sovereign and the French Napoleon.

There is also the exclusive LinGold Savings Plan (LSP) which is the First Personal Savings Account in Physical Gold in the World. An innovative idea to save regularly and monthly in pure gold (watch out for our article on the LSP).

Here at GoldCoin we appreciate new opportunities to invest in real, physical gold that are extended to a wide audience of investors as the benefits have too long been the reserve of an elite few.

This new venture, LinGold.com, has something for every budget and is very user friendly.

They have plenty of pertinent and interesting information (free to download) on why, how and what to invest such as their LinGold Brochure and of course our favourite the LinGold Gold Coin Guide which helps the novice and expert alike.

LinGold.com, we applaud your arrival and wish you every success for the future.
Ps. We’ve already signed up as Members (which is free and took less than 1 minute)

The discovery of gold in Australia in the mid 19^th Century had more of an affect on the nation than its discovery in any other country, transforming Australia from a British penal colony to a nation that integrated many nationalities. To this day a term of endearment for Australians is “Digger”.   It was not an easy passage and on the way there was greed, dispute, revolution, racism and a new type of outlaw “the bushranger; but gold was responsible for the building of infrastructure, the end of transportation and financial viability. Britain no longer had any excuse for withholding self-government from its Australian colonies eventually leading to the formation of the Federation of the Commonwealth of Australia after the referendum of 1900. As for gold itself some of the biggest nuggets ever formed came out of Australia which gave the name to famous “nugget” gold bullion coin of today.

It all began when Edward Hargraves returned from the Californian goldfields and was convinced that there was  similarity in geological features between Australia and the California. In February 1851, Hargraves took his pan and rocking-cradle and with his guide, John Lister, set out on horseback to Lewes Pond Creek, a tributary of the Macquarie River close to Bathurst where he filled and washed several pans, some of which did indeed produce gold. He named the place ‘Ophir’ after the biblical golden city, reported his discovery to the authorities, and was appointed a ‘Commissioner of Land’. He received a reward of £10,000, plus a life pension

Australian gold fields

Word spread quickly and within a few days 100 diggers were frantically tunneling for instant wealth. The road over the Blue Mountains from Sydney became choked with men from all walks of life, carrying tents, blankets, and rudimentary mining equipment hastily bought at inflated prices. By June there were over 2000 people digging at Bathurst, and thousands more were on their way. Gold fever gripped the nation and the colonial authorities responded by appointing ‘Commissioners of Land’ to regulate the diggings and collect licence fees for each ‘claim’.

Hargraves could never have dreamt how significant his discovery would be. New South Wales yielded 26.4 tonnes (850,000 ounces) of gold in 1852. This was a mere drop in the ocean compared to the yield from neighbouring Victoria when they joined the rush for gold.

The Victorian authorities, eager to prevent its population from joining the gold frenzy in NSW, offered a reward of £200 for any gold found within 200 miles of Melbourne. In 1851, six months after the New South Wales find, gold was discovered at Ballarat, and a short time later at Bendigo Creek.

Very soon the fabulously wealthy alluvial goldfields at Ballarat and Bendigo turned Victoria into a magnet for immigrant adventurers, who came in their hundreds of thousands – literally. The Australian gold rush would transform the British colonies, eventually into a nation. In 1851 the population of Victoria stood at around 80,000, and a decade later it had risen to over 500,000. In 1852 alone, 370,000 immigrants arrived in Australia and the economy of the nation boomed. The total population of Australia increased threefold from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871.

Deposits were also uncovered in other states: Western Australia and Queensland in the early 1850s, the Northern Territory in 1865, and Tasmania in 1877, though the rich Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie fields in the west were not uncovered until the 1890s. But Victoria was the epicentre of the Australian gold rush.

Holtermann's Nugget

In October 1872 Holtermann’s Nugget was found. At that time it was the world’s largest specimen of reef gold. It weighed 286 kg and measured 150cm by 66cm. The Hand of Faith (27.2 kg), the Welcome Stranger (73.4 kg) and the Welcome (69.9 kg) are other famous Australian nuggets. Between 1851 and 1861 Australia produced one third of the world’s gold

Despite the romantic attraction the reality was a harsh life with filthy and dangerous conditions made all the worse by the administration.  The system of licences caused great trouble at all the goldfields. Miners had to pay the fee of 30 shillings each month, which was exorbitant, whether or not they had found gold. They had to renew the licence each month. They had to carry their licence at all times to avoid prosecution. The frequent licence hunts caused great resentment within the mining communities, especially as the police employed to enforce the licencing system were notoriously corrupt and behaved with excessive brutality. As resentment and tension grew, under the leadership of Peter Lalor, an Irish immigrant, a group of several hundred miners erected a stockade of logs at Eureka near Ballarat. They withdrew into the stockade and unfurled the Southern Cross flag to proclaim an oath to fight to defend their rights and liberties. This was meant to be symbolic rather than revolutionary and most miners left after a day but some 400 troops stormed those that remained and 22 miners were killed and the leaders arrested and taken for trail. However, the courts refused to convict them and a following Royal Commission remedied the miner’s grievances and allowed them political representation  and Peter Lalor was elected to the Victoria parliament.

With Police concentrating on licence hunts they had little time to fight other crime and  travelers,  particularly those heading towards Melbourne from the gold fields were liable to be ambushed by groups of outlaws called bushrangers.

The diggers had come from many nations but by far the largest national contingent other than British and Irish were the 40,000 Chinese who had made their way to the Australian goldfields. They were mostly under contract to businessmen and worked the goldfield until the debt for their passage was paid off. As the deposits dwindled there were moves to restrict the Chinese diggers as they worked untiringly and were able to sustain the viability of their claims longer than their Western counterparts. They would rework ground abandoned by Europeans, and continue to work a claim until the whole of the gold bearing earth had been cleaned. There were campaigns to oust the Chinese from the goldfields and the motivation was based on racism and fear of competition for the  dwindling amounts. Victorian Parliament imposed a tax of £10 a head on all Chinese entering the colony and a poll tax of £1 per annum levied on every Chinese person on the goldfields. Restrictions were eventually placed on Asians in general, to prevent an influx from other nearby nations: Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. And of course the native Aborigine was rarely permitted to own gold.

At the turn of the century the Australian gold fields were the most productive in the world and today the hold second place ironically to China who have raced to the head of the gold producers in the last decade. The richness of the gold fields brought large numbers genuine traders who supplied the tools, timber and transportation plus the usual hotchpotch of drinking dens, hotels and prostitutes.  New towns and cities sprung up and merchants of all types flourished and hundreds of companies were floated and a new wealthy bourgeoisie was created. They eventually wanted to distance themselves from the riffraff so more respectable areas were built, trams were required for transport in the towns and railway networks were needed to join them. By 1853 under pressure from the new wealthy inhabitants the British ceased the process of transporting convicts to Australia. Many large public works programmes were undertaken as prosperity increased. This dramatic improvement in wealth and facilities led to the formation Federation of the Commonwealth of Australia after the referendum of 1900.  A new Nation was born

Maurice Hall