Victoria's gold rush capital and the site of the Eureka Stockade — where Ballarat sits on the gold-bearing alluvial plains of central Victoria and the Sovereign Hill outdoor museum (a 25-hectare recreation of an 1850s goldrush mining township, where visitors pan for real gold in the re-created creek, watch actors in period dress, and ride horse-drawn coaches through muddy streets) is the most visited paid tourist attraction in regional Victoria, the Eureka Centre houses the Eureka Flag (the only battle flag to arise from an Australian labour uprising — the Eureka Stockade of December 3, 1854, where 22 miners and 6 soldiers died in Australia's closest approach to a workers' revolution), the Ballarat Botanical Gardens (established 1858, with a 1.5 km Prime Ministers Avenue of white marble busts of every Australian Prime Minister) surround the ornamental Lake Wendouree, and Ballarat has more classified heritage buildings per capita than any other city in Victoria outside Melbourne
Ballarat (120,000 city; 130,000 greater area) is Victoria's third-largest city and the primary inland city of Victoria — a gold rush boomtown established in 1851 after the discovery of gold in the Yarrowee River that grew faster than any city in the British Empire in the 1850s, building a Victorian-era streetscape of banks, theatres, hotels, and civic buildings of exceptional grandeur. Ballarat's gold rush architecture is now one of the best-preserved Victorian-era streetscapes in Australia.
Ballarat's name comes from the Wathaurong (Wadawurrung) people's 'balla arat' — 'resting place.' The gold discovery at Ballarat in August 1851 triggered the Victorian Gold Rush — the richest gold rush in Australian history. Within three years, the Ballarat goldfields had produced more gold than any comparable area on earth at the time, and the population of the entire Australian colonies doubled as 500,000 people arrived from Britain, China, Ireland, and America. The Eureka Stockade (December 3, 1854) was a miners' revolt against the colonial government's gold licence system — 500 armed miner…