The second half of the nineteenth century corresponds with the most expansive period of the British Empire under Queen Victoria. Its successes in Australia lay largely with the new colony of Victoria. This relied neither on convicts nor on assisted immigrants for most of this period, being peopled by many thousands seeking gold from 1851 (Hill 2010). The Victorian population increased sevenfold between 1851 and 1860. (Blainey 1969, 2008). Over half-a-million made it the largest of all the Australian colonies by 1860, a position it retained until 1895. Thousands were living in tents in the early years, but Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and many other towns were well built and even impressive cities by the time the depression of the 1890s struck (Serle 1963; Bate 1979). Goldfields around central Victoria provided much of the wealth and were worked mainly by recent immigrants, not all of them British.

The ‘golden age’ began inauspiciously, with the 1854 rebellion at the Eureka stockade in Ballarat. (FitzSimons 2012; Molony 1984). Although it was put down by the military, as it would have been in England, its long-term effect was the extension of the franchise to males and the election of miners’ leaders to the Victorian parliament. Eureka underlined how fragile was social cohesion in a society that was rapidly growing and mobile. Wisely, the colonial administration saw that creating a popular parliament and broadening the distribution of land was likely to absorb social resentments. Rather than repression, the New South Wales government implemented changes already planned before the uprising, as did the new colony of Victoria.

The nineteenth century was characterized by much excitement about increased population. London prided itself on being the largest city in the world, at the head of the largest empire in world history. New South Wales drew ahead of Tasmania quite rapidly, was passed by Victoria between 1854 and 1895, with Queensland and South Australia catching up fast from 1870 and West Australia lagging well behind until 1900. By then New South Wales and Sydney had regained the prime position from which they started and that they have never again lost. In the four fastest-moving colonies the motive force was gold, while South Australia and Tasmania had population surges from mining baser metals. Sheep and wheat remained the staple products of agriculture.