William Campbell (1810-1896) has long been known to be one of the first discoverers of payable gold in Australia, but Clunes historian John Sayers wants to set the record straight.
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Mr Sayers says Campbell deserves more recognition as he firmly believes him to be the first discoverer of gold in Australia.
“There is a statue for James Esmond in Clunes which names him as the first discoverer of gold, but this is incorrect,” he said.
He states the reason for the misconception being that Campbell did not declare the discovery straight away.
Campbell was originally an estate miner in Scotland, before emigrating to Sydney in December 1838 where he worked as a sheep station manager.
In 1845, he over-landed with 150 merino sheep before settling in Clunes.
Campbell first discovered gold in early 1850 on his brother-in-law’s property.
His brother-in-law, Donald Cameron, feared that if other people found out, the resulting gold mining would ruin his pastoral land and deter the labour force.
Subsequently, the discovery was kept a secret.
Campbell applied to the Gold Rewards Committee in 1854.
In a letter, sourced from the Parliament of Victoria’s files, which Campbell penned in 1851, he explained how the “extraordinary accounts of a gold mine in California turned (his) attention to that subject; and from reading a description of the geological formation of the auriferous part of that country, [he] thought from observing a large vein of quartz at Clunes of similar formation, that it was most likely the place to find gold in.”
His views were “considered visionary” for some time, until he eventually succeeded in having three men accompany him on a search.
“In the course of a few minutes, I had the satisfaction of having the correctness of my expressed opinions verified by the discovery of a gold mine in Australia, on the exact spot where I thought it would be found,” he wrote.
He was officially voted as the first discoverer of payable gold in Clunes in 1858 and awarded £1000, but was paid less than half that sum.
The site of Campbell’s discovery became the historic Port Phillip Mine.
His discovery spurred thousands of keen gold miners to Clunes in search of gold.
Campbell went on to be a millionaire, owning many cattle stations and acting as a shareholder in Goldsbrough Mort and as a director for the Melbourne and Hobson’s Bay United Railway.
He built a house on the corner of Collins and Spring Street’s in 1877 to a design by architect Leonard Terry.
The month of March marks the month of the first discovery of payable gold in Victoria. Mr Sayers is hosting an exhibition at the Clunes Bottle Museum about William Campbell.
It is the second in a series of five exhibitions he is hosting about the history of gold in Clunes. The exhibition opened on March 15 and will close on April 15.
