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Gold Fields Tourism

About the Gold Fields Region

The Gold Fields region of Victoria is located to the north-west of Melbourne. Gold was first discovered in the region in mid-1851, not far from the relatively new city of Melbourne. This find was published in the Melbourne Argus on 8 September 1851, leading to a rush centred on present-day Castlemaine, claimed to be the richest shallow alluvial goldfield in the world.

The initial discoveries were soon surpassed by bigger ones at Ballarat and Bendigo, and more finds in a number of other locations around Victoria followed. The population of Melbourne grew swiftly as the gold fever took hold. The total number of people in Victoria also rose. In 1851, it was 75,000 people. Ten years later, this rose to over 500,000.

The gold rush is reflected in the architecture of Victorian gold-boom cities like Ballarat and Bendigo, and in their attractions for tourists. Ballarat has both Sovereign Hill - a large recreation of a gold rush town – and the Gold Museum, while Bendigo has the Central Deborah Goldmine, a large operating goldmine system.

Ballarat is notable as the site for Australia's only armed civil uprising, colloquially referred to as the Eureka Stockade but more correctly titled the Eureka Rebellion, which took place on 3 December 1854. The event, in which 22 miners died, is considered a defining moment in Australian history. The purported site of the rebellion contains an historical park and a memorial to the event. The remains of the original Eureka Flag are on public display in the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.

The gold rush also left the legacy of a myriad of other quaint towns in the region like Maryborough, St Arnaud and Dunolly. With the possible exceptions of Ballarat and Bendigo, all of these towns were substantially larger during the rush than they are today. Some settlements in the region are now ghost towns.

List of Towns in the Gold Fields Region

Click on any town name in the following list to display historical, geographical and tourism related information for the town selected.

AVOCA | BALLARAT | BENDIGO | CARISBROOK | DUNOLLY | HEATHCOTE | MALDON | MARYBOROUGH | MOONAMBEL | ST ARNAUD

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