Why the man hailed a hero for discovering gold Down Under was, in fact, a ‘loathsome charlatan’

The man hailed a hero for changing Australia’s fortunes with the discovery of gold has been unmasked as an ‘utterly loathsome’ fake who did no such thing.

The discovery of gold was one of the most defining moments in our postcolonial history.

Almost overnight, Australia was launched from a convict dumping ground to a player on the main stage. According to most history books the man we have to thank for it all was Edward Hammond Hargraves.

The truth, however, is that Hargraves was NOT the great discoverer. As I discovered researching my new book Gold, he was a charlatan, an impostor and a general arse.

Yet despite being utterly loathsome – and despite repeatedly demonstrating this with a trail of unpaid debts, underwhelmed people, broken promises and persistent lies and laziness – he was never, at least not in the estimation of the general public, knocked from his throne.

The official story of the discovery is that in February 1851, near Bathurst in NSW, Hargraves – an English-born adventurer who had come to Sydney in his teens – discovered gold. The five pieces he found were so small that they were placed under an upturned glass to magnify them. The family he was lodging with was unimpressed, especially as they had more gold flecks sitting in jars on their mantelpiece.

‘Utterly loathsome’ … Edward Hargraves in an 1851 portrait by Thomas Balcombe.

Conveniently forgotten was the fact that he had been led to his ‘discovery’ by the hotel manager’s son and his friends. Similarly ignored was the fact that he had been told where to go by Aussies he’d met on the California gold fields. Also scrubbed were discoveries made up to a decade earlier, including two occasions where the shiny stuff was actually put in the governor’s hand, as well as samples sent to England and recorded in scientific journals.

Hargraves was awarded £10,000 for his discovery (the equivalent of $1.3 million today), but complained it wasn’t enough. The young boys who led him to the site were awarded £1000 to share between them; Hargraves complained that they received too much.

Thinking he had a knack for discovering gold, he was sent to Brisbane to find a workable goldfield but within a week he was considered a laughing-stock and mocked for having traces of last night’s dinner on his gold prospecting pan. The Moreton Bay Courier wrote of him as ‘rude and uncultivated’ and ‘supremely ridiculous’.

He was then given £500 a time to go to Perth, then to Adelaide, each for six months to find a goldfield. On both occasions he frustrated people by only going to places where gold had already been discovered and pronouncing them ‘workable’. Analysing his journal from his six months around Perth it was noted that he only got off his horse 16 times.

‘Extremely coarse and tasteless’ … it’s not just author Matt Murphy (pictured) who takes a dim view of Edward Hargraves. Newspapers at the time weren’t too flattering, either.

But such was his mystique that despite these recorded failures Hargraves was again offered £500 to meander around Tasmania, with one scribe writing that what he had achieved was ‘no more than a set of schoolboys with their geological hammers in the holidays’.

His oafishness extended beyond the goldfields. He was struck off as a magistrate and even kicked off the board of his local church. He was named in parliament by such luminaries as Wentworth and Macarthur as a ‘shallow and impudent pretender’ and ‘an impostor’. Newspapers referred to him with phrases such as a ‘greedy, unconscientious person without any respect’, ‘extremely coarse and tasteless’ and ‘undignified, ill-natured and foolish’.

But that’s the fascinating thing about him; none of these attributes stuck. Somehow his fame and free lunches continued regardless.

Dethroned hero … Edward Hargraves.

Forty years after his great “discovery”, the three who insisted they led Hargraves to their site finally had their day before parliament. The parliamentary committee confirmed that John Lister and William and James Tom, not Edward Hargraves, were indeed the discoverers of gold in Australia.

But it made no difference. Long after they had all died – and despite Hargraves being officially dethroned – he remained a hero. In honour of the centenary of his discovery of five microscopic dots, a stamp was minted with Hargraves’ portrait on it.

It is said that history is told by the victors. It seems amazing that in this case no matter how flawed both the victor and his victory were, this is still true. Google Edward Hammond Hargraves today and most sites still record him as the great discoverer – not the great impostor.

Gold by Matt Murphy will be published by HarperCollins on March 5.

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