Historedia
Episode 1 of 3

Announcement at Ophir

When
12 February 1851
Where
Bathurst Hotel
Part of
First Australian gold rush proclaimed at Bathurst

Edward Hargraves announced the discovery of payable gold at Ophir on 12 February 1851 in a Bathurst Hotel.

Flecks of gold were found in the Fish River in 1823, but Hargraves' 1851 announcement at a Bathurst Hotel regarding a site 26 miles north-west named Ophir triggered the rush. This site is near Orange.

Sources

  1. Bathurst, New South Wales Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-15
  2. Australian gold rushes Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-22

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.