Melbourne – Ballarat

Melbourne and ACDC Lane

Melbourne is the capital and most-populous city of the Australian state of Victoria. Its usually refers to an urban agglomeration of 9,993 km2 comprising a metropolitan area with 31 municipalities. The city occupies much of the coastline of Port Phillip bay and spreads into the Hinterland towards the Dandenong and Macedon ranges, Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley. It has a population of 5 million. This region has been a home to Indigenous Australians for over 40,000 years, the Melbourne area served as a popular meeting place for local Kulin nation clans. A short-lived penal settlement was built at Port Phillip, then part of the British colony of New South Wales, in 1803, but it was not until 1835, with the arrival of free settlers from Van Diemen’s Land (modern-day Tasmania), that Melbourne was founded. It was incorporated as a Crown settlement in 1837, and named after the then British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. In 1851, four years after Queen Victoria declared it a city, Melbourne became the capital of the new colony of Victoria. During the 1850s Victorian gold rush, the city entered a lengthy boom period that, by the late 1880s, had transformed it into one of the world’s largest and wealthiest metropolises.

Of note are couple of lanes, which display amazing number of grafitti – protected as art under municipal law. Most of that grafitti is located on AC/DC Lane is a laneway in the central business district. It is a short and narrow street running off Flinders Lane, between Exhibition Street and Russell Street. Formerly named Corporation Lane it was officially renamed on 1 October 2004 as a tribute to Australian rock band AC/DC the lane was . The renaming was permitted by a unanimous vote of the Melbourne City Council. Melbourne’s Lord Mayor John So launched AC/DC Lane with the words, “As the song says, there is a highway to hell, but this is a laneway to heaven. Let us rock.” Bagpipers then played “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll).”

Sovereign Hill

Sovereign Hill is an open-air museum in Golden Point, a suburb of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. Sovereign Hill depicts Ballarat’s first ten years after the discovery of gold there in 1851. The second-largest gold nugget in the world was found in Ballarat in the Red Hill Mine which is recreated in Sovereign Hill. The Welcome Nugget weighed 69 kg and comprised 99.2% pure gold, valued at about 10,596 pounds when found, and worth over US$3 million in gold now, or far more as a specimen.

The idea of Sovereign Hill was floated in Ballarat in the 1960s, as a way to preserve historic buildings and to recreate the gold diggings that made the city. The complex was officially opened to the public on 29 November 1970. Main street is a loose reconstruction of Main Street, Ballarat East which was once the settlement’s main street, consisting of timber buildings. It was consumed in a large fire during the 1860s and a more substantial town centre planned around Sturt and Lydiard Street in Ballarat West. It was officially opened on 29 November 1970 and has become a nationally acclaimed tourist attraction.

Set in the Australian 1850s, the complex is located on a 25-hectare site that is linked to the richest alluvial gold rush in the world. The site comprises over 60 historically recreated buildings, with costumed staff and volunteers, who are able to answer questions and will pose for photos. The recreation is completed with antiques, artwork, books and papers, machinery, livestock and animals, carriages, and devices all appropriate to the era.