Golden Australia 135 



dark-leaved eucalyptus. Broad straight streets 

 intersect the main avenue at regular intervals, 

 and each of these in its turn is an avenue of euca- 

 lyptus, oak, and pine. Pleasant villas and neat 

 cottages line the streets, and everywhere are gar- 

 dens and trees. On the western boundary of the 

 city was once a dismal swamp, now converted into 

 a beautiful lake, fringed with weeping-willows 

 and surrounded by plantations of ornamental 

 trees. On the farther shore of the lake is a beau- 

 tiful pleasure ground, where marble statues gleam 

 amid fern grottoes and rose bowers, and children 

 play all day on lawns of soft English grass shaded 

 by trees drawn from every quarter of the globe. 

 It is a city of gardens rather than a city of gold. 



Sixty years ago, King Billy and his tribe of 

 aborigines roamed in undisputed possession of the 

 valley, then covered with virgin bush. Ten years 

 later, a hundred thousand diggers were living 

 under canvas on the field, and the roaring days 

 of Ballarat had begun. Some of those diggers 

 are still alive in Ballarat, old men who have seen 

 the city advance through its fifty years of history, 

 and can point to the spot where some tall build- 

 ing stands and say, ' ' Here I sank my first shaft, 

 and there I bottomed on a hatful of nuggets." 

 Ballarat, these veterans will tell you, has its spots 

 of historical and romantic interest. Here is the 

 forge where one picturesque digger had his horse 

 shod with shoes of gold, and hard by is the hotel 

 where lucky miners lighted their pipes with 



