Gold was discovered in Australia in 1851, and within a year the infant colony was transformed from a sump for convicts to a Land of Opportunity.

Robyn Annear’s lively history describes in detail life on the diggings- the mud of winter and dust of summer, the pluckiness of the women and children, the grog shanties, the flies, the mania of mining, the despair and the delirium, and the much hated licensing system which was to culminate in the Eureka Stockade.