Professional Documents
Culture Documents
At the Goldfields
Much of the alluvial gold was running out and the Chinese miners re-worked claims that had been abandoned and collected gold that had been missed. They preferred not to go deep underground for fear of offending the mountain gods. They also saw other opportunities to make money, and worked at other jobs around the diggings, such as washing clothes, selling vegetables they'd grown, selling cooked food or herbal medicines and so on.
No one entering Victoria from any other country had to pay this tax. However, this did not reduce the numbers of Chinese. They landed in South Australia and walked several hundred kilometres to reach the Victorian goldfields.