The brave independence of the 'roaring days', the camaraderie of the gold fields, jolly diggers on a spree-these are the images that have come down to us of the gold era of the 1850s in Australia and California. But these images were largely shaped decades later, by writers such as Henry Lawson and Bret Harte-they speak of later nostalgia rather than the experience of the time.

In this study of the contemporary response to the discoveries of gold in Victoria and California, David Goodman argues that people at the time were apprehensive about gold rushing, and the kind of society it...