Golden Triangle

In the 1850s, men arrived here from every corner of the globe with a single intention. They found gold in the creeks and then in the quartz reefs beneath the plains, and what followed built two of the most extraordinary provincial cities in Australia. Walk down Ballarat's Sturt Street or Bendigo's Pall Mall today and the scale of that wealth is written in bluestone and iron lacework.

Ballarat's Sovereign Hill is the gold rush brought back to life — an open-air museum where costumed inhabitants mine, smelt and trade on a full-scale recreation of the 1850s township. The Eureka Centre, beside it, tells the story of the Eureka Stockade with a stirring seriousness. The original Eureka flag, battered and blood-stained, is one of the most charged objects in Australian history.

Bendigo's Cathedral, its central debating hall and the ornate Sacred Heart Cathedral are gold money frozen in architecture. The Bendigo Art Gallery is one of the finest regional galleries in Australia, punching consistently above its weight in international exhibitions. Between the two cities, the old mining landscape — poppet heads, mullock heaps, mine shafts converted to viewing platforms — makes a fascinating pastoral drive through country that genuinely shaped the nation.