Chinese Gardens
Tourism Victoria

Highlights

Sovereign Hill

One of Victoria’s top tourist attractions, Ballarat’s Sovereign Hill is a living museum. Blacksmiths, bakers and storekeepers in period dress ply their trades amid the tents, while miners pan for gold. In the evenings ‘Blood on the Southern Cross’, a sound-and-light re-enactment of the Eureka Rebellion, is played out across the town streets.

Ballarat Begonia Festival

Every year in early March for the past 100-odd years, Ballarat’s 40-hectare Botanic Gardens have been awash with colour during the city’s annual Begonia Festival. Apart from stunning floral displays, held chiefly in the Robert Clark Conservatory, the 20 000-plus people who come to the festival enjoy gardening forums, street parades, fireworks, art shows, kids’ activities and much more.

Bendigo’s Chinese sites

The restored Joss House on the city’s northern outskirts and the Golden Dragon Museum in Bridge Street are reminders of the substantial presence of Chinese immigrants on the goldfields. The museum has an excellent display of Chinese regalia. A ceremonial archway leads from the museum to the Garden of Joy, built in 1996 to represent the Chinese landscape in miniature.

Pall Mall

The tree-lined, French-style boulevard of Pall Mall in Bendigo is probably country-Australia’s most impressive street, with many of its buildings dating back to the gold rush. To complete the picture, Bendigo’s vintage trams rattle up and down the street.

Castlemaine

This historic goldmining town has a community of painters, potters, instrument makers and other craftspeople. The original market building, with its classical Roman facade, now houses visitor information and a gold-diggings interpretive centre. Worth a visit is the 1860s Buda Historic Home, with its heritage-listed garden, and the Castlemaine Art Gallery with its impressive collection of local and international art.

Maldon

The 1860s streets of Maldon are shaded by European trees and lined with old buildings of local stone. Declared a Notable Town by the National Trust, Maldon has historic B&Bs and a tourist steam train. Take in the view from the Anzac Hill lookout.

Backblocks of the goldfields

Some of the quieter gold towns are tucked away in a rural pocket northwest of Bendigo. In Dunolly 126 nuggets were found in the town itself – see replicas of some of the most impressive finds at the Goldfields Historical and Arts Society. St Arnaud boasts the beautiful Queen Mary Gardens and a number of old pubs and verandah-fronted shops. There are eucalyptus distilleries at Inglewood and Wedderburn.

Maryborough Old Railway Station

Mark Twain described Maryborough as ‘a railway station with a town attached’. Grand for the size of the town, the former railway station now houses a tourist complex that includes an antique emporium, a woodworking shop and a restaurant and cafe.

Focus On: Gold-rush history

Sovereign Hill in Ballarat is one of the country’s best historic theme parks. It offers a complete re-creation of life on the 1850s goldfields. The nearby Gold Museum, part of the Sovereign Hill complex, features displays of gold nuggets and coins, and changing exhibits on the history of gold. The Eureka Stockade Centre offers interpretive displays on Australia’s only armed insurrection, which took place in 1854. See the original Eureka Flag at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, which also houses an excellent collection of work by artists such as Tom Roberts, Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale and Fred Williams. In Eureka Street is the tiny Montrose Cottage (1856), an ex-miner’s house furnished in the style of the period; here a museum display movingly recalls the lives and contribution of women in the gold-rush era. In Bendigo, the Central Deborah Gold Mine offers tours 80 metres down a reef mine, and excellent displays on goldmining techniques.