Young

Postcode: 2594

Young is a town in the South West Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia and is the centre of Young Shire.

The indigenous people of the district were members the Burrowmunditory tribe, part of the Wiradjuri people.

The Roll Up banner around which a mob of about 1,000 men rallied and attacked Chinese miners at Lambing Flat in June 1861. The banner is now on display in the museum at Young.

Gold was found in the district in 1860. Until that time the area was called Lambing Flat, a reference to the grazing of sheep that was the main industry until mining. The town was gazetted in 1861. The goldfields produced 470,000 ounces of gold sent by escort from the fields. Up to 20,000 miners worked the fields including about 2,000 Chinese miners.

From November 1860 through to June 1861 anti-Chinese miners attacked Chinese gold miners in the area, now known as the infamous Lambing Flat riots. As gold became scarce, European miners began to resent what they saw as the greater success of the more industrious Chinese, and hence many Chinese miners were attacked, robbed and killed. The anti-Chinese rebels rallied in numbers of up to 3,000. Eventually the rioters were controlled, Chinese miners had their claims restored to them, but the New South Wales Parliament passed the Chinese Immigration Bill which restricted the number of Chinese that could be brought in to New South Wales on any ship and imposed a tax per head on entry.

In 1889 Young was the first town in Australia other than the capital cities to install electricity into the streets and homes of the township.

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