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Harcourt Gold—First Discovery

A small cairn on the North side of Specimen Gully Track, Barker’s Creek, marks the location of the 20 July 1851 discovery of alluvial gold by three shepherds and a bullock driver employed by Dr William Barker on his sheep run.

Mrs Worley, the wife of the bullock driver, offered some gold nuggets in payment for a sheep taken for meat. When the squatter, Dr Barker, accused the men of trespass they wrote to the Argus announcing their discovery. The rest of the story, as they say, is history.