![Board game called ‘Race to the Gold Diggings’ around 1855.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/titelbild-spiel-300x225.jpg)
The Ticinese and the Australian Gold Rush
In August 1854, Giovanni Antonio Palla from Cevio and Tommaso Pozzi from Coglio returned to Ticino after securing a fortune through mining in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria. News of their arrival spread like a wildfire, spurring a wave of migration. Around 2000 Ticinese participated in the Australian Gold Rush of the 1850s, and left an indelible imprint upon the country.
![Tents from Mount Alexander gold diggings, Sketch from R. S. Anderson, 1852.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/mount-alexander-gold-diggings-1-300x186.jpg)
!['Swiss tunnel' at Jim-Crow diggings, around 1858.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/swiss-tunnel-jim-crow-300x230.jpg)
![Map of Australia from 1879.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/australia-map-1879-300x230.jpg)
![Gold nugget from Bendigo, Victoria.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/goldnugget-bendigo-284x300.jpg)
…We've golden soil and wealth for toil; Our home is girt by sea; Our land abounds in nature's gifts; Of beauty rich and rare…
Working in the Fields of Gold
![Alluvial gold washing, John Skinner Prout, London, 1874-1876.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/gold-panning-300x203.jpg)
I could not sleep that night, nor for many nights after in that tent. I had never come across such a thing. I was cold and the worst of it was the hunger, the number of fleas and lice that crawled all over me, and the mice at my neck and ears all night long.
![Eureka Stockade riot, Ballarat, John Black Henderson, 1854.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/eureka-rebellion-300x207.jpg)
Impact and Legacy
![In the community of Hepburn Springs in Victoria, the Ticinese influences are still present: not only in an annual 'Swiss-Italian Festa', but also in the name of the 'Locarno Springs'.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/locarno-300x225.jpg)
![A house called 'Locarno' in Yandoit, 1989.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/haus-locarno-in-yandoit-300x204.jpg)