Nicholas Wolf

_Writing from Melbourne, I can officially report that some truly wonderful resources for Irish studies can be found right here in south Victoria. Historically, the Irish made up approximately 15% of the Victorian population by the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the highest percentage in all of Australia. Given the astounding growth of Melbourne itself during the gold rush of the 1850s--within months of the gold discovery, its population had nearly doubled--this made it a particularly populous Irish center with all sorts of interesting global connections such as those to the similarly gold-crazy U.S. west coast. Irish, along with English, Scottish, Australian, German, and Canadian miners, were also involved in the defining event in the push for universal male suffrage for whites in Victoria, the Eureka uprising of 1854.