After yesterday’s storms, it was nice to get out for a walk this afternoon (Wednesday). Beautiful blue sky and around 20 degrees C. Much more pleasant than the high 30s we had yesterday.
We took a different path to our usual ones, this time walking along the side of Canadian Creek in the Ballarat suburb of Golden Point, and back along Main Road. Main Road was the centre of activity in the 1850s following the discovery of rich gold, with hotels, theatres, and other businesses in a fairly small area. These burnt down a number of times. But that’s a story for another time.
As we looped around, I saw this monument, a basalt monolith recognising the discovery of gold in 1851. I have literally driven past a few thousand times and never noticed it before. When you are on foot though, you do see more.
The faded sign near the monument reads:
The Chinese Village & the Gold Monument
Gold was first discovered in Ballarat on the rise above the creek in late August 1851. By the late 1850s this was the site of a Chinese village. There were 9,000 Chinese in Ballarat by 1858. They tended to live and work together because of language and culture, and there was much prejudice against them. The government established a protectorate system at each major goldfield in 1855 to avoid clashes between Chinese and Europeans. The Chinese were herded into these filthy and overcrowded villages and forced to pay £10 for the privilege of this ‘protection’.
The monument has had a chequered history. The column was first intended to be added to the Eureka Stockade monument, but was not required after a donation allowed the purchase of more expensive stone. It was then erected in 1889 by the Ballarat East Town Council at the corner of Barkly and Young Streets to mark the spot where the council considered gold had first been found. There was lively local controversy at the time over the site and the obelisk was described as a melancholy looking object. It was removed in 1951 and broken in the process. It lay in three pieces in the Llanberris Reserve until 1954 when it was restored and re-erected in the reserve.
The Ballarat Gold 150 Committee 2001 undertook to again restore the monument and move it to a more public location to mark the sesquicentenary of gold discovery. It now stand beside the creek near where the first claims were sunk in 1851. The nearby Llanberris Mining Company was Ballarat’s first quartz mine, beginning operations in 1858.
Judging by the state of the enamelled information sign (see second photo), maybe this area needs a little bit of TLC.