Ballarat Hotels

Ballarat is a city of 84,000 people, about 110 km (65 miles) north-west of Melbourne in the Goldfields region of Victoria, Australia. Drive time from Melbourne is about 80-90 minutes. Ballarat is most noted as a former goldmining town and the site of the famous miners' strike at the Eureka Stockade, the event celebrating its 150th anniversary in late November - early December 2004. Gold was discovered near Ballarat in 1851, and the influx of over 10,000 miners in less than a year transformed it from a pastoral town into Victoria's largest settlement. The Victorian gold rush occurred throughout the 1850s and 1860s whilst gold could be readily extracted from the surface. The city's growth slowed after the 1880s and Melbourne quickly overshadowed it in importance. However, Ballarat has endured as a major inland regional centre and tourist destination, having retained much of its Victorian era heritage, a unique culture, and is highly regarded for its grand heritage listed public and private buildings, monuments, statues and expansive gardens.