The discovery of gold in Ballarat in 1851 transformed its landscape to a staggering degree. Within days, and despite the news being initially suppressed, hundreds of men had gathered along the Yarrowee River.
They sluiced the clay and soil, turning the once pristine waters into what writer William Bramwell Withers described as
liquid, yellow as the yellowest Tiber flood, and its banks grew to be long shoals of tailings.
