The gold fields were a melting pot of people from all around the world.

They spoke different languages and dialects and often chose to live and work with people from their own country: Germans would set up a specific camp, for instance, as would the Irish and the Welsh.

In the 1850s Chinese people quickly became the largest national sub-group outside of the British on the goldfields. At the height of Chinese migration to Victoria they made up over one-fifth of the male goldfields population, in some towns more than half the goldseekers resident were Chinese.