The gold rush began in the month Victoria was formally separated from New South Wales. Never had a new colony received such a birthday present. On 5 July 1851 a Melbourne publican broke the news that he had found gold up the River Yarra at Warrandyte, only 16 miles from Melbourne. Those who collected pick and shovel, tin dish, tent and supplies, and set out to try their luck at his diggings soon received news that they had travelled in the wrong direction. Richer gold was found west of Melbourne. A bush sawyer who had not long ago returned from the Californian diggings found gold at Clunes, within a stone's throw of the homestead of a Scottish squatter. Early in August the Buninyong blacksmith found gold only a mile from his bellows and forge, and in a couple of hours he collected enough gold to fill a matchbox. In several months of hard work as a blacksmith he would not have earned that much money. Geelong was the point of departure for these first rushes in the western half of Victoria, and the Melbourne Argus reported that now the ‘whole town of Geelong is in hysterics’.

Men who had just left Victoria for the goldfields around Bathurst in New South Wales began to hurry home when they heard that the gold here was richer and dispersed over a larger region. In the spring and early summer of 1851 great rushes set in. Ballarat, Mount Alexander (Castlemaine) and Bendigo were found in a few months of easy discovery. Much of their early gold was dug within a foot of the surface. Only men with heavy commitments at home, or with a strong sense of duty or a weak imagination, were able to resist the temptation to rush to the goldfields. At the end of 1851 about half of the men of Victoria, and thousands from Tasmania and the Sydney-side, were working on the diggings. Of Melbourne's forty municipal policemen, thirty-eight had resigned. In the port most of the ships were unable to sail away with safety because too many of their crew had deserted, leaving their pay uncollected. In some districts the harvest would have been eventually flattened by the winds but for the teams of Aboriginal men and women replacing the farm labourers who had vanished to the diggings.