The Third Epoch of Bushranging; the Gold Digging Era; Influx of Convicts from Van Diemen's Land; Passing of the Criminals' Influx Prevention Act; Attitude of the Diggers Towards the Bushrangers, and Other Thieves; The Nelson Gold Robbery; Some Pitiful Stories; A Rapid Raid; Insecurity of the Melbourne Streets. Before entering upon the next stage in the story of the bushrangers, it may be advisable to say something of the vast change which suddenly took place in the conditions in Australia about this time. In 1842-3 the colony of New South Wales was plunged into a financial crisis, about which it is unnecessary to say much here, but from which the colony was only beginning to recover in 1851. Wages were still very low, and numbers of men were out of work. In April, 1851, the news that gold had been discovered at Summerhill Creek, in the Bathurst district, roused something like a ferment in the colony. Men employed in Sydney threw down their tools to "go to the diggings." There was a general exodus from the coast cities and towns to the ranges, then considered far away in the interior. Wages jumped from about one shilling per day for labour to ten or more, meat rose from one penny per pound, for the best cuts, to sixpence. The roads leading to Orange, the Turon, and other early goldfields in New South Wales, were thronged by men, either going to the diggings to seek their fortune, or returning disappointed. In July, 1851, the Port Phillip district of New South Wales was erected into the independent colony of Victoria, and in August the news that gold had been struck in the Ballarat district of the newly-established colony turned the tide of gold-seekers in that direction. The police establishment, with which the new colony started, was merely that of an outlying district of a huge sparsely-populated colony, and was wholly inadequate to the requirements.