Gold Regulations

Gold Workings Ballarat, c1854 State Library of Victoria Collection ( H25191)

Samuel Thomas Gill, Diggers on route to deposit gold, c1852, watercolour and gum arabic on paper.
Art Gallery of Ballarat, gift of Mr. Tony Hamilton and Miss. S.E. Hamilton, 1967.

By law no unlicensed person on a goldfields could carry on or follow any business, or become resident on any of the Gold Fields or Gold Mines, no waste lands of the Crown. Exemptions to these rules were:

1. Holders of a license or lease for pastoral purposes. within the limits of their own runs.

2. Officiating ministers of religion and schoolmasters.

3. Servants of such holders, ministers, and schoolmasters, residing with and being in their actual employment.

4. The servants residing with, and being in the actual employment of holders of Licenses to carry on the business of storekeepers.

5. All females not mining or trading, children under fourteen years of age who only reside, but not mine on any Gold Field.

Penalties for being unlicensed were as follows:

for the first offence, a sum not exceeding five pounds; for the second offence a sum not exceeding 15 pounds nor less then five pounds; and for the third offence, a sum not exceeding thirty pounds nor less than fifteen pounds.