Page:Banking Under Difficulties- Or Life On The Goldfields Of Victoria, New South Wales And New Zealand (1888).pdf/26

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OR, LIFE ON THE GOLDFIELDS.
17

pitched at Golden Point. About this time Governor La Trobe visited the diggings, and was entertained by Dr. Barker at the station.

The following is a report from a select committee of the Legislative Council on the claims for the discovery of gold in Victoria 10th March, 1854:—“But the prolific deposits of Mount Alexander render it interesting to record that the honour of first finding gold there is claimed by Christopher Thomas Peters, then a hut-keeper at Barker’s Creek in the employ of Wm. Barker, Esq., on the 20th July, 1851, at Specimen Gully. John Worley, George Robinson, and Robert Keen, all in the same employment, were immediately associated with him in working the deposits, which they continued to do until the following month. On the 1st September, having become alarmed at the unauthorised appropriation of their produce, Worley, on behalf of the party, to prevent their getting into trouble, published in one of the Melbourne journals an announcement of the precise situation of their workings. With this obscure notice, rendered still more so by the locality being described by the journalist as at Western Port, were ushered to the world the inexhaustible treasures of Mount Alexander.”