The Diggings
In the 1850’s forty thousand gold diggers teamed up the road from Melbourne to Castlemaine to claim their share from what they called the ‘bank-till free to all’ — the richest shallow alluvial goldfield in the world.
Today, towns like Castlemaine, Chewton and Maldon tell part of the story of the great gold rush — their streets lined with buildings grand and humble. But the surrounding bush harbours its own tales of a golden past: crumbling stone walls of huts and pubs, and the gold mines and gullies that yielded up fortunes.
The gold diggers gave names to almost every metre of ground. Sometimes it was their own name — Cranky Ned and Dirty Dick where real people. Others named their new homes after old ones—Adelaide Flat, Californian Gully. Often the old places would convey something of the misfortunes suffered there—Murdering and Chokem Flats, and there was Deadman’s Gully, Bung-eye Gully and Burying Ground Flat.
The centrepiece of the Mount Alexander Diggings Project is an Interpretive Centre in the Castlemaine Market Building, one of Australia’s most significant historic buildings. The Diggings Interpretive Centre enables visitors to choose from a ‘menu’ of activities and interactions, including eyewitness accounts of the 1850s gold rush, town tours, self-drive tours and guided visits to historic sites and through the relic landscape of the gold rush. The purchase of a Diggings Guidebook will be a visitor’s key to unlocking for themselves the secrets of the district’s gold-rush past.