The fifth industrial period extends from the close of the gold era to the year 1873, and it was during this time that the first steps were taken along the course that has led to the industrial and social conditions now existing in Australia. The years 1862 to 1873 were, in one view, a pause between two periods of rapid development. If the gold discoveries, as Wentworth said, precipitated Australia into a nation, during this subsequent period the precipitate settled itself, and the peculiar characteristics of Australian economic life began to emerge. From 1851 to 1862 Australian society had undergone violent changes. The diffusion of wealth, the rapid changes of fortune, had overthrown all the old ideas of class stability; the inrush of population had entirely obliterated bond labour as an economic factor in the country, and the change in the constitution and the wide extension of the franchise had prepared the stage for the entrance of democracy. It is the gradual and somewhat timid appearance of democracy which is chronicled in the period now under review.

The swift and easy gains of the gold period had gone. After 1861 the El Dorado dreams of that era gradually faded from men's minds, and, although large discoveries of gold were made in the 'sixties and afterwards, the impulse towards gold-seeking never again became a dominating passion among any large part of the community.