Sixteen Tons of Clunes Gold details the rise of Victoria’s first major gold mining company from its Brazilian ancestry to the winning of 514,800 ounces of gold from Clunes over three decades.

Founded in 1852, as one of about 50 London-based Australian Mining companies during the so-called ‘Gold Bubble’, the Port Phillip Company was the only one to ultimately prosper.
Its survival, through tensions with government, battles with diggers, the introduction of large-scale mining to Victoria and the pursuit of technology, is vividly drawn by the author, John Woodland, who spent almost 20 years of his working life as a geologist in the central Victorian goldfields.

The discovery of payable gold at Clunes had special significance as its announcement came within days of the separation of Victoria from the Colony of New South Wales on the 1st July 1851. The Clunes discovery was a direct result of the Gold Reward offered by the mayor and concerned citizens of Melbourne to stop the exodus of would-be diggers to the New South Wales Goldfields. It sparked the gold boom that was to follow shortly at Ballarat, Castlemaine and Bendigo.

This authoritative history of gold mining in Victoria’s first goldfield is now available from the Clunes Museum.