AUSTRALIA

In the meantime, one of the seven thousand Australians who had joined the forty-niners had gone home disappointed after having had his claim jumped. Edward Hargraeves did not give up his search for gold, and he did not remain disappointed for long. In 1851, he struck gold in New South Wales, and Melbourne and Sydney boomed, as had San Francisco, with a rush of prospectors from all over the world.

No other country has ever felt the impact of the discovery of gold as much as Australia did. It was first settled in 1788 as a penal colony and remained one for sixty years.

Gold changed that, tripling the population from 400,000 in 1851 to 1,200,000 in 1861, as more Id was discovered in Western Australia and Queensland. That 200 -pound nugget was a "Welcome Stranger" in more ways than its size.