from the 10 December 1831 when the Australian Agricultural Company officially opened Australia's first railway, located at the intersection of Brown and Church Streets, Newcastle, New South Wales. Privately owned and operated to service the A Pit coal mine, it was a cast-iron fishbelly rail on an inclined plane as a gravitational railway. The earliest railway in South Australia consisted of the seven-mile horse-drawn freight line between Goolwa and Port Elliot, which began service on 18 May 1854, allowing steam ships to avoid the treacherous mouth of the Murray River. The first steam locomotive began service soon afterward on the Port Melbourne line between Sandridge (now Port Melbourne), and Flinders Street in Melbourne. In 1848, the Sydney Railway Company was established to connect Goulburn and Bathurst to Sydney, mainly to convey wool for export to the United Kingdom. The company proposed that standard gauge () be used but had considerable difficulty in raising sufficient funds to commence construction and the first section of the line, between Granville and Sydney was not opened until 1855. This area is now part of Sydney's western suburbs and the railway line became the first section of what is now the Main Suburban line. The Sydney Railway Company went bankrupt building it and as a result the line was taken over by the government, leading to the establishment of the New South Wales Government Railways. Part of the reason for the delay in starting construction and the Company's eventual bankruptcy was the start of the Australian gold rushes in 1851—these created a labour-shortage and forced up prices. In fact the railway did not reach Goulburn until 1869 and Bathurst until 1876, both lines having had to cross difficult topography. Victoria was the main beneficiary of the gold rushes, with the major discoveries around the state but particularly at Ballarat and Bendigo (then called Sandhurst) in the early 1850s. While this created a labor shortage in the colony (which had separated from New South Wales in 1851), it also caused great development in Melbourne, first settled in 1835 and declared a city in 1847. As a result, Australia's first steam-powered railway was a suburban line opened by the Melbourne & Hobson's Bay Railway Company from Melbourne to Sandridge in 1854. This line and almost all subsequent Victorian lines were built to broad gauge (, gauge). In 1856, the government-owned South Australian Railways opened its first 1600