Tarnagulla
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Tarnagulla Victoria |
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Commercial Road, the main street of Tarnagulla
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 Tarnagulla
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| Coordinates | 36°46′0″S 143°49′0″E / 36.76667°S 143.81667°ECoordinates: 36°46′0″S 143°49′0″E / 36.76667°S 143.81667°E | ||||||||||||
| Population | 304 (2011 census) | ||||||||||||
| Postcode(s) | 3551 | ||||||||||||
| Location | |||||||||||||
| LGA(s) | Shire of Loddon | ||||||||||||
| State electorate(s) | Ripon | ||||||||||||
| Federal Division(s) | Bendigo | ||||||||||||
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Tarnagulla is a gold mining town in central Victoria, Australia. The town is in the Shire of Loddon local government area, 183 kilometres (114 mi) north west of the state capital, Melbourne. At the 2011 census, Tarnagulla had a population of 304.
European settlement in the area began with the taking up of Tarnagulla station in the 1840s.Gold was first found in the area in 1852 by prospectors on their way to the Korong goldfields near Wedderburn. The discovery led to a gold rush as more than 5,000 miners made their way to the diggings. The settlement created by these miners was first at known as Sandy Creek and was renamed Tarnagulla, after the station in 1860. Reflecting this, the Post Office opened on 13 August 1856 as Sandy Creek and was renamed Tarnagulla on 2 January 1861.
Tarnagulla is fonetic meaning of Polish Czarnogóra (eng. Black Mountain - Montenegro). Name was given by Polish explorer and geologist Paweł Strzelecki.
The first miners in the area were prospectors from South Australia followed by many more from other diggings and from around the world. A canvas town grew up quickly to service the needs of the miners. In 1853, the first gold nuggets were found near Tarnagulla at Nuggetty Gully with one pair of miners finding 86 lb (39 kg) of gold in a fourteen-day period. Many other large nuggets including one weighing 32 lb (14.5 kg) were found in the area.
From 1854, the focus of the miners turned to quartz mining with the discovery of the Poverty Reef. The reef was named by one of its discoverers, Mr. Hatt, in remembrance of Poverty Bay, New Zealand where he had been saved from drowning by a Māori woman. The Poverty lode was unusual in that the gold was found in large blocks of quartz. Allegedly the richest pocket of reef gold ever found, more than 13.5 tonnes (430,000 ozt) of gold was recovered from Poverty Reef in 13 months from an area 3 metres wide and 120 metres deep (10 ft by 400 ft).
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Wikipedia