never assume there is no gold in a spot just because it has never been reported on the maps.
alot of land was settled by farmers before the gold rush , and if those farmers decided nobody would be given permission to enter their land to look for it then so be it - no prospecting was done by order of fences or bullets whistling overhead.
something else to consider when evaluating locations is that many miners didnt speak or write english , many didnt trust the government or mines inspectors of the day so i estimate that anywhere between 40 - 75 % of gold found was never reported and mapped by the authority of the day.
part of this hobby is understanding nature and the elements , but the understanding of human behavioural dynamics is also a factor.
another little factor is the surprising lack of mobile phones back in the 1860's , you cant ring the mines inspector to notify them so do you travel for 3 days to report their finds in person and risk being robbed on the way , or do you travel for 1 day to port and take their booty back to China / canada / germany , UK ?
easy answer for me
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http://www.egold.net.au/biogs/EG00201b.htm
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When we think of the heady early years of the gold rushes in Victoria, regional towns like Ballarat and Castlemaine usually come to mind. This entry by Robyn Annear tells the less well-known stories of gold discoveries in the town of Melbourne in the early 1850s.
Gold was found in many places in Victoria during the 1840s, mainly by shepherds and farm labourers. Their finds were mainly kept secret, as mining was illegal, all gold (and other metals) being the property of the Crown. No system of licences or miners rights existed; in fact, gold discovery was positively discouraged as an unsettling, uncivilising influence in a British colony where savagery had not long since been conquered. Earl Grey, the British Minister for the Colonies, had said of Australia as early as 1839: If gold is discovered I will do nothing to facilitate it. Rather I would send someone to hide it.
One of the earliest gold discoverers in Victoria was old Jemmy Gumm, who had arrived as one of Johnny Fawkner's servants on board the Enterprise in 1835. During the early 1840s he was known as Gumm the Gold Hunter and lived in a hut in the Plenty Ranges (now the Warrandyte area). Police troopers raided his camp in search of gold belonging to the Queen, but found only crucibles and bellows.
Closer to Melbourne, gold was discovered at Richmond by a labourer digging a post hole, but that was supposed to be a freak occurrence.
By the late 1840s, the existence of gold in many parts of Victoria was an open secret among the authorities and squatters - as well as among a number of Melbourne jewellers who surreptitiously bought native gold from shepherds and encouraged their further exploration. But no finds were made official until the gold rush to New South Wales in 1851 forced Victoria's hand. When it seemed that the new colony of Victoria (it had until then been just a district of NSW) might lose its entire labouring population to the NSW goldfields, a committee was formed to promote and reward gold discovery in Victoria. In July 1851 came the announcement that 'unquestionable evidence has been adduced showing the existence of Gold in considerable quantity both at the Deep Creek on the Yarra (near Major Newman's run) [that is, Anderson's Creek, Warrandyte], and also at the Deep Creek on the Pyrenees, near Mr Donald Cameron's house [that is, Clunes].
And so the gold rushes began - Buninyong, Ballarat, Mount Alexander, Bendigo, and so on. Now, one of the few initial regulations governing gold mining in Victoria stated that mining could not take place within one mile of a settlement or station that was in existence prior to the first gold rushes. That included, of course, Melbourne and its suburbs - which, at that time, were limited to Richmond, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Hotham (North Melbourne), Williamstown, Emerald Hill (South Melbourne), Sandridge (Port Melbourne), St Kilda, South Yarra and Prahran.
