ed by historian Geoffrey Serle, " the major significance of the 'lure of gold' was that it remade Victoria, and peopled it- whether or not with the 'best blood of the old world'- with men of more diverse talents, skills and backgrounds, and perhaps more vigour, than Australia had yet seen" (The Golden Age, first published 1963).
             The news of gold discoveries in Victoria built a bridge from Europe to the gold fields and sparked a massive influx of immigration to the young colony. In March 1851, Victoria's population was a mere 80,000, not including native persons. By 1854 the population tripled to 237,000 and by 1861 it had doubled again to 540,000. The colonial town of Melbourne could not sufficiently support the thousands of people arriving each day. In 1852 the first ships began arriving from England, flooding Melbourne with an extra 15,000 people, all looking for a place to sleep. Canvas tents sprang up on the banks of the Yarra in the south of Melbourne as depicted in De Gruchy & Leigh's painting "Canvas Town" 1850-1860 (State Library of Victoria) where canvas tents stretch out as far as the eye can see. The canvas town's of the early 1850's characterized the ambition of those in search for wealth more than a hundred miles north of Melbourne in the Gold fields. Letters written to the Australian and New Zealand Gazette describe the scene: "One of the most striking peculiarities here to a new arrival is the immense encampments that surround Melbourne. The vast number of tents that stud the open ground in every direction conveys a clear idea of that enormous emigration to Victoria, which requires, in addition to the house accommodation of an overgrown city, the erection of canvas suburbs, where the hordes of adventurers daily arriving, may find a temporary shelter on landing, and before starting to the great storehouses of Mammon at Mount Alexander and Ballarat...