Background:
The first gold rush in Australia began in May 1851 after prospector Edward Hargraves claimed to have discovered payable gold near Orange, at a site he called Ophir. Hargraves had been to the Californian goldfields and had learned new gold prospecting techniques such as panning and cradling. Hargraves was offered rewards by the Colony of New South Wales and the Colony of Victoria. Before the end of the year, the gold rush had spread to many other parts of the state where gold had been found, not just to the west, but also to the south and north of Sydney.
The Australian gold rushes changed the convict colonies into more progressive cities with the influx of free immigrants. These hopefuls, termed diggers, brought new skills and professions, contributing to a burgeoning economy. The mateship that evolved between these diggers and their collective resistance to authority led to the emergence of a unique national identity. Although not all diggers found riches on the goldfields, many decided to stay and integrate into these communities.
In July 1851, Victoria\'s first gold rush began on the Clunes goldfield. In August, the gold rush had spread to include the goldfield at Buninyong (today a suburb of Ballarat) 45 km (28 m) away and, by early September 1851, to the nearby goldfield at Ballarat (then also known as Yuille\'s Diggings) followed in early September to the goldfield at Castlemaine (then known as Forest Creek and the Mount Alexander Goldfield) and the goldfield at Bendigo (then known as Bendigo Creek) in November 1851. Gold, just as in New South Wales, was also found in many other parts of the state. The Victorian Gold Discovery Committee wrote in 1854:
The discovery of the Victorian Goldfields has converted a remote dependency into a country of world wide fame; it has attracted a population, extraordinary in number, with unprecedented rapidity; it has enhanced the value of property to an enormous extent; it has made this the richest country in the world; and, in less than three years, it has done for this colony the work of an age, and made its impulses felt in the most distant regions of the earth.
When the rush began at Ballarat, diggers discovered it was a prosperous goldfield. Lieutenant-Governor, Charles La Trobe visited the site and watched five men uncover 136 ounces of gold in one day. Mount Alexander was even richer than Ballarat. With gold sitting just under the surface, the shallowness allowed diggers to easily unearth gold nuggets. In 7 months, 2.4 million pounds of gold was transported from Mount Alexander to nearby capital cities.
The gold rushes caused a huge influx of people from overseas. Australia\'s total population more than tripled from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871. Australia first became a multicultural society during the gold rush period. Between 1852 and 1860, 290,000 people migrated to Victoria from the British Isles, 15,000 came from other European countries, and 18,000 emigrated from the United States. Non-European immigrants, however, were unwelcome, especially the Chinese.
The Chinese were particularly industrious, with techniques that differed widely from the Europeans. This and their physical appearance and fear of the unknown led to them to being persecuted in a racist way that would be regarded as untenable today.
In 1855, 11,493 Chinese arrived in Melbourne. Chinese travelling outside of New South Wales had to obtain special re-entry certificates. In 1855, Victoria enacted the Chinese Immigration Act 1855, severely limiting the number of Chinese passengers permitted on an arriving vessel. To evade the new law, many Chinese were landed in the south-east of South Australia and travelled more than 400 km across country to the Victorian goldfields, along tracks which are still evident today.
In 1885, following a call by the Western Australian government for a reward for the first find of payable gold, a discovery was made at Halls Creek, sparking a gold rush in that state.

Bartholomew, John & Heirs
John Bartholomew Sr. 1805 - 1861 was a Scottish cartographer and engraver. The son of George Bartholomew, engraver (1784 - 1871), John founded the engraving and map-making firm of John Bartholomew and Son Ltd. in 1826. Bartholomew also worked for George Philip & Son. He was a veritable master copper plate engraver and engraved fine maps for local firms, such as street maps for Lizars, others for the Encyclopedia Britannica and for some educational publishers like A & C Black. He was commissioned to engrave the map of Treasure Island for Robert Louis Stevenson.
John Sr. was the ideal person to inaugurate what became one of the most admired cartographic institutions in the world. A man of high standards, as were his successors; he was a superb engraver, engraving becoming the foundation of the firm; lithography would follow later. He also had the vision to recognise the potential for the firm. He was a shy man, holding back from public life.
In 1832 - 1833 James was living at 4 East St James Street (demolished to build the St James Centre).
In 1859, shortly before he died, John Senior passed the business on to his son John Bartholomew Junior.

John Bartholomew Jr 1831 - 1893 was a Scottish cartographer, born in Edinburgh. His father John Bartholomew Senior started a cartographical establishment where he learnt his craft.He was subsequently assistant to the German geographer August Petermann, until in 1856 when he took up the management of his fathers firm. Bartholomew built a reputation unsurpassed in Great Britain for the production of the finest cartographical work and for a time in-house cartographer for George Philip.
Bartholomew is best known for the development of colour contouring (or hypsometric tints), the system of representing altitudes on a graduated colour scale, with areas of high altitude in shades of brown and areas of low altitude in shades of green. He first showcased his colour contouring system at the Paris Exhibition of 1878; although it initially met with skepticism, it went on to become standard cartographical practice.
Among his numerous publications, particularly worthy of note is the series of maps of Great Britain reduced from the Ordnance Survey to scales of 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch to 1 mile, with relief shown by contour lines and hypsometric tints. The 1/2 inch series is among the finest of its kind ever produced.
Upon his retirement in 1888, John Bartholomew was succeeded in the firm by his son John George, who extended the 1/2 inch series, and applied its principles to many other works.

John George Bartholomew 1860 - 1920 was a British cartographer and geographer. As a holder of a royal warrant, he used the title Cartographer to the King; for this reason he was sometimes known by the epithet the Prince of Cartography.
His lasting legacy is arguably naming the continent of Antarctica, which until his use of the term in 1890 had been largely ignored due to its lack of resources and harsh climate.
Under his administration the family business became one of the top operations in its field. Bartholomew himself was not merely a specialist in production, but also a talented geographer and cartographer. It was he who introduced the use of coloured contour layer maps; he also anticipated the needs of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century travelers by publishing street maps of major cities, cycling maps, railway timetable maps, and road maps for automobiles.
He collaborated with major scientific figures and travellers of the period on projects involving their studies. Bartholomews Atlas of Meteorology and Atlas of Zoogeography were issues from a planned five-volume series that was never completed. Before he died he was able to plan out the first edition of the Times Survey Atlas of the World; this and its succeeding editions represent the most successful atlas project of the twentieth century.