James Esmond

James William Esmond (11 April 1822 – 3 December 1890) was an Irish-Australian gold prospector and miner, and was one of the first people to discover gold in Australia.

Early life Esmond was born in Enniscorthy, a town in County Wexford in the south-east of Ireland, in 1822, the son of a merchant. Migrating to the Port Phillip District (later the colony of Victoria) in 1840, Esmond worked a number of jobs, including working on stations in the Western Port region, and driving the mail coach from Buninyong to the region around Horsham, a major town in the Wimmera. There he met Dr George Hermann Bruhn, a German doctor and geologist who was returning from Clunes. Bruhn told Esmond that in Clunes he had met with the pastoralist Donald Cameron; gold had been found on Cameron's property in March 1850, and Bruhn told Esmond of quartz reefs there which were likely to bear gold. and by Clarke in the Advertiser on 22 July 1851. Withers' respectful tribute to Esmond, one of a number of Eureka diggers who had recently died, was unusual at the time, when the Stockade was still regarded by many as a disloyal rebellion.

Esmond was survived by his wife Margaret, their three sons and six daughters.