6o AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



eucalypti,' says Mr. Julian Thomas, 'and I could imagine this to be 

 California. But when one first drives from the station and sees the 

 magnificent width of Sturt Street, with the avenue of trees planted along 

 the centre, the public buildings, banks, and churches — you are possessed 

 with astonishment that this is a mining town. Ballarat is indeed a great 

 inland capital. The difference between this and Sandhurst is that at the 

 latter the mines obtrude themselves everywhere. One cannot go half a block 

 but one has mullock-heaps and poppet-heads in view. There is a mine in 

 every back-yard. At Sandhurst it is gold — nothing but gold ! Small nuggets 

 are occasionally, so say the truthful inhabitants, picked up by sharp-visioned 

 pedestrians in the public streets. There is gold or evidences of it all around, 

 even in the very bricks of the houses in which we live, for the old men tell 

 that the first brick building ever erected in Sandhurst was pulled down and 

 crushed, yielding three ounces to the ton ! In Ballarat it is all different. Walk 

 up Sturt Street, or along Lydiard Street, and one sees nothing but substantial 

 buildings and avenues of trees. The mines are in the suburbs, and do not 

 deface the town, as at Sandhurst. After an experience of the plains the city 

 is a perfect Arcadia. Embowered in trees, the homes of the people are 

 surrounded with gardens. There is verdure and vegetation in every street. 

 One mentally associates an amount of roughness and coarseness with a 

 mining town. Here it is quite other than so. There is everything to bring 

 light and culture and sweetness home to the people. Sandhurst is superior 

 in one respect — that its public gardens are right in the centre of the town, 

 running by the side of old Bendigo Creek ; but there is nothing in the 

 colonies to surpass Wendouree Lake, the walks around it, and the adjacent 

 reserves and Botanical Gardens. An easy walk from the town, and you 

 embark on one of the fleet of elegant little steamers — perfect yachts — 

 furnished with luxurious cushions and rugs as protection from the spray. 

 Here everything is calm and peaceful. There is no dust, no noise, no 

 smells. Sailing boats and rowing boats are plentiful ; in little punts fisher- 

 men are bobbing for perch. This is a lung which gives health and 

 happiness to the inhabitants of Ballarat. And when, after crossing the lake, 

 you land under the shade of English oak trees, and the air is perfumed with 

 the scent of new-mown hay, you feel that in no other mining community in 

 the world have the people such privileges as here. The Botanical Gardens 

 are always beautiful, and are a model to other establishments of the same 

 kind in much larger communities.' 



It was here, early in August 1851, that alluvial gold was discovered at 

 a bend in the Yarrowee Creek, renamed Golden Point, where the toil of some 

 of the earlier diggings yielded from twenty to fifty pounds weight of gold 

 per day. In some spots, indeed, the gold lay almost on the surface, amidst the 

 roots of the bush grass, to be turned up by the wheels of the passing bullock- 

 drays, or picked out by hand after heavy showers. At first it was thought 



