With Christmas over, not to mention 2020, it was time to start exploring again. I headed north of Melbourne to the old gold-mining town of Castlemaine.
Gold was discovered at Mount Alexander on September 1851, just a few miles north-east of Castlemaine, and along with finds at Bendigo, Ballarat, Clunes and Buninyong, it became one of the greatest gold bonanzas the world has ever seen, attracting almost 100,000 immigrants to the area from all over the world.
I spent two nights at the old Globe Guesthouse, just one block from the main shopping centre. It could have done with a bit of a paint job inside but apart from that it was extremely comfortable: a good firm bed, a television that worked, a little kitchen with food laid on for breakfast and a proprietor who kept on insisting on making me real coffee. So nice. The car stayed in its place and I mostly walked around.
Globe Guesthouse 
Globe Guesthouse
I love the streetscapes of old gold-mining towns.
The towns were quite well-off for awhile, so they ended up with some pretty substantial-looking buildings.
The massive Old Castlemaine Gaol sits atop a hill overlooking the town. Constructed between 1857 and 1864, it served as a goldfields gaol, a reformatory school for boys, and then a medium security prison, before closing in 1990. It’s closed at the moment due to Covid, but in the meantime is being developed as a space for installations of art, sculpture and unique collections, as well as for special events. I’ll be back. I love walking around old prisons with their histories and their ghosts.
Castlemaine Gaol 
I wandered up a hill near where I was staying to discover a monument to what’s known as the Burke and Wills expedition. A group was sent out by the Royal Society of Victoria to explore along the western border of Queensland and inland, but in particular to beat the South Australians in being first to travel from the south coast of the country to the north.
Robert O’Hara Burke, Castlemaine’s superintendent of police, was chosen to lead. It was a horrendous journey, seven of the party dying along the way. Burke reached the Gulf of Carpentaria in February 1861, but died on the way back. Locals raised money for the monument, and the foundation stone was laid on 1st July, 1862, the anniversary of Burke’s death. The granite obelisk was completed in July, 1863.
On my way out of town, I stopped at Forest Creek Historic Gold Diggings, the site which sparked the world’s second gold rush. A 400-metre long loop has been mapped out, showing the environmental impacts of various types of alluvial gold mining: shaft sinking, tunnelling and hydraulic sluicing.
There’s not much there now, other than a couple of shafts and some rusty equipment, but the signage is terrific, giving you a really good idea of what the place would have been like at the time with its miners, women, children, stores, brothels and the large Chinese community, along with scuffles with the police and the odd murder or two. A pretty interesting place, I’d say.
The Forest Creek Loop 
The space each miner was allowed for his shaft was 2.5 metres square (8 feet) 
Not even gold would entice me to down here.
Signage at Forest Creek 
Planning to the Nth 
This is a place I wanted to visit last year but we chose Ballarat wildlife park instead
So after reading your post will plan a visit next time I’m in Melbourne
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Thanks, Alison. I passed through on the way back from Bendigo a couple of years ago and made a promise I would go back for a good look.
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What a perfectly charming town! This is right up my street. If I ever get to Australia, I’ll certainly be pencilling in Castlemaine.
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I hope you can, Leighton. If you do, I’d also check out Bendigo and Ballarat, actually the whole gold-mining area around there. It’s a pretty interesting spot.Thanks for reading.
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So nice to see you back on your travels, we can’t go anywhere in the UK due to COVID, at present, but perhaps more interestingly gold and Australia rang a bell. My wife’s great, great, great? grandfather sailed for Australia on 14/8/52 on the Henry Gillespie.
He arrived East Brighton, Melbourne 25/12/1852 and lived in a tented village at first, then at the home of a Joseph Ostler.
He bought land in Melbourne, according to court case details, from James Owen. He put capital into farmland but lost everything due to the drought. When gold was discovered in Ballarat in October 1854, he took his wife there on or around 20 July 1855!
Your story has rekindled some old memories and Jared’s story shows just how adventurous some Victorians were.
Finally, re Burke and Wills, can I recommend Desert Journeys, by Geoffry Rawson.
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That’s so interesting, Richard. I’d like to try and check that all out. And I’ll definitely look out for that book. We had a teacher in our 5-6 composite class in the tiny town of Longwarry in Gippsland, who gave us a love of Australian history. We covered a lot of the explorers and of course the Burke and Wills expedition one of them. We were taught Burke was the wrong man for the job and it was his lack of organisation that caused the problems with the expedition. I’d like to work out, now, whether that was right or not. Cheers.
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I’m glad so many of those old buildings have survived. So often once the mines play out, everything falls apart.
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That’s true, Ray. We’re lucky. So many of the towns survived really well, especially the large ones of Ballarat and Bendigo. You could click on December 2018 in my list, if you’re interested, for a trip I did to Bendigo a couple of years ago.
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Love that part of the world. Re inspired especially now that travel is so difficult.
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That’s great! I hope you can get on with it again soon.
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What an interesting place Coral. Like you, I enjoy exploring old prisons so will be interested to read about it once you’ve had an opportunity to visit. Good to see you able to travel around the state in the lovely sunshine. Marion
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Thanks, Marion. It’s certainly great to be able to move around again, though you’re never sure whether the state borders will be open or shut from one day to the next. Sorry about guys. It sounds a bit dire over there.
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We’d a folk group here – the Clancy Brothers – They sang ‘ The Wild Colonial Boy’ who was, if I remember the lyrics correctly, born in Castlemaine!!!!
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I’d forgotten about ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’, Marie, so I had to look him up. The story goes he was an Irishman who came here in the early 19th century, and spent his time robbing from the rich to feed the poor. He was born in Castlemaine, County Kerry.
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At least I had it partly right!!!!!
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We haven’t been to Castlemaine for years – it was a favourite stop-over in the past. As road trips are back in vogue, your post gives good reason to put it back on the list.
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That’s great, Browney. There’re so many of these lovely country towns to explore. You can just get up in the morning and take off.
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Yes that’s true. I was mid-writing about a couple of towns we visited last week when your post appeared.
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I feel a road trip coming on!! 🙂
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I stayed in Castlemaine for two nights in 2016. As a fan of the TV show ‘Blue Heelers’ it was interesting to see the where the exteriors for the show were shot. The tour of Old Melbourne Gaol was fascinating.
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Thanks for that, Graeme. I didn’t realise that’s where ‘Blue Heelers’ was filmed. Such a good show.
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Very interesting article. Lots of info and its now on the list of my ever growing list of places to see in Australia .
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Thanks so much.
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Such a beautiful and fascinating town. I can never get enough of it. I think it’s time I went back. Thanks for the post.
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Fascinating piece of history but I was drawn to it by the name Castlemaine and it started off a tune in my head which I now can’t get rid of. When I was very young (in Northern Ireland), we used to sing a song about Ned Kelly and a couple of lines in it went: He was born and bred in Ireland (3 syllables), In a place called Castlemaine. And now I find there is such a place in Australia. But why should I be surprised? I saw lots of names of Belfast Street in Sydney when I was there. Anyway, it took me back to the school playground where the song was forbidden but we sang it as rebellious spirits – or so we thought..
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Hi, Mari. The song is probably ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’, only using the Irish lyrics, because there are Australian lyrics as well, just to confuse things. Fancy it being forbidden! How funny.
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Your article is informative and makes me add this to bucket list of places to visit in Australia.
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Thanks so much.
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