19th century. However, by the end of the 1880s, overseas investors became more concerned with the difference between expected returns and actual returns on Australian investment. The Barings Crisis of 1890, although focused on Argentina, led to a reassessment of the exposure of investors to regions of declining return, and consequently British investors began to withdraw from providing further funding to the Australian market. This caused a banking crisis in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania. In 1891, The Bank of Van Diemen's Land was the first major bank to fail, with 13 more to follow. By the end of the year it is estimated that half of Australian bank customers had been debarred from their bank. Consequently, the eastern Australian colonies saw the start of a severe depression in 1890-91. Australian economic historian Noel Butlin would later argue that the history of Australian settlement has been one of growth financed by foreign capital, punctuated by depression caused by balance of payment crises after a collapse in property prices and exacerbated by the imprudent use of capital. The impact of the end of the long boom and the collapse of the property market in Melbourne did not impact as greatly the economy of the colony of Western Australia, where substantial reserves of gold were discovered at Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie in a region of Western Australia that subsequently became known as the 'Goldfields'. This prompted a 'Gold Rush' in Western Australia characterized by a sustained, rapid expansion of the colony that would continue up to the First World War. This expansion allowed the development of the port of Fremantle, the opening up of the south-west corner of the colony for agricultural development and the rapid expansion of the colonial rail network. In the 1880s, the long boom culminated in a frenzy of speculation and rapid inflation of land prices known as the Land Boom and centred on the city of Melbourne. Governments shared in the wealth and ploughed money into urban infrastructure, particularly railways. Huge fortunes were built on speculation, and Victorian business and politics became notorious for corruption. English banks lent freely to colonial speculators, adding to the mountain of debt on which the boom was built. Following the collapse of the Land Boom, property values in central Melbourne would not return to the level of the 1880s until the late 1950s (in real terms). 1890–1900 1890: the