Author Talk – Matt Murphy ‘Gold’

Next date: Wednesday, 14 May 2025 | 02:00 PM

Ask Google ‘who discovered gold in Australia?’ and you’ll promptly get ‘Edward Hammond Hargraves’. For decades Hargraves has received fame, fortune and adulation from all corners of the country, but did he earn it?

What about the two diggers he met on the Californian goldfields who told him where to look when he returned to Australia?

What about the guys who led him to where they’d heard gold had been found before?

What about the pioneers whose discoveries had been documented years earlier?

Gold is the story of an oversized layabout who received years of accolades and free lunches, despite lumbering from one embarrassment to the next, and of those who spent decades trying to expose him and seek their share of the glory.

About the author

As a school student, Matt Murphy failed English and couldn’t see the point of history. He became a firie and has been serving in Sydney’s inner city for 33 years. He is now also a part-time historian and teacher, tolerating the attitudes of kids towards history that he used to share.

He has written three books: Weight of Evidence, about what was the longest civil court case in New South Wales; Rum, about the formative influence of grog on the country; and Gold.

Matt’s younger self would be aghast that he is now writing history books but be consoled by the absurdist voice old Matt has achieved. Matt also can’t believe he has to write his own bio.

Picture of bookcover called RUM by Matt Murphy