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MAPPING BALLARAT’S HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE Stage 1

Final Report

September 2013

Prepared for

City of Ballarat

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Report Register

This report register documents the development and issue of the report entitled Mapping Ballarat’s Historic Urban Landscape: Stage 1 undertaken by Context Pty Ltd in accordance with our internal quality management system.

Project No.

Issue No.

Notes/description Issue Date

Issued to

1730 1 Stage 1 Report: Part 1 30.07.13 Susan Fayad

1730 2 Stage 1 Report Part 2 - preliminary 19.8.13 Susan Fayad

1730 3 Stage 1 Report – Final Report 13.9.13 Susan Fayad

Context Pty Ltd 22 Merri Street, Brunswick 3056

Phone 03 9380 6933 Facsimile 03 9380 4066

Email [email protected] Web www.contextpl.com.au

Context Pty Ltd 2013

Project Team:

Context

John Dyke, Project Manager

Annabel Neylon

Chris Johnston

Louise Honman

Urban Initiatives

Tim Hart

Leila Griffiths

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CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the Project 1 1.2 Objectives 1

1.2.1 The overall project 1 1.2.2 Scope of Stage 1 2 1.2.3 Review and consultation 3 1.2.4 Limitations 4

1.3 Project Team 4 1.4 Acknowledgements 4

2 THE HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE (HUL) APPROACH 5

2.1 Introduction 5 2.2 The emergence of the Historic Urban Landscape approach 5 2.3 Defining HUL and the HUL approach 7

2.3.1 Purpose 7 2.3.2 Defining historic urban landscape 7 2.3.3 Approaches 8 2.3.4 New tools 8 2.3.5 From an Australian perspective 9

2.4 Applying this approach to Ballarat 10 2.4.1 Past studies 10 2.4.2 The Stage 1 project 10

3 WAYS OF SEEING BALLARAT 11

3.1 Introduction 11 3.2 Seeing through the layers of history 12

3.2.1 Looking at the past from the present 12 3.1.2 Using themes to explore the past 12

3.3 Seeing the urban landscape through maps 17 3.3.1 Maps from the past 17 3.3.2 Looking at Ballarat in its regional setting 25 3.3.3 Looking at the City of Ballarat 32

3.4 Seeing through community eyes 44 3.4.1 Background 44 3.4.2 Distinctive identities 44 3.4.3 Ballarat Imagine 46

4 INDICATIVE CHARACTERISATION FRAMEWORK 49

4.1 Introduction 49 4.2 Methodology 49

4.2.1 Landscape Character Assessment 49 4.2.2 Our approach 49 4.2.3 Summary 50

4.3 Setting the scene 51 4.3.1 The south- west Victorian landscape 51 4.3.2 The visual landscape of Ballarat 52

4.4 The Indicative Character Framework 57 4.4.1 Introduction 57

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4.4.2 Information on each character area 58 4.4.3 Indicative Character Areas, Municipality of Ballarat 59 4.4.4 Indicative Character Areas, Ballarat Urban Core 83

5 DEVELOPING THE HUL APPROACH FOR BALLARAT: STAGE 2 AND BEYOND 110

5.1 Moving from Stage 1 to Stage 2 110 5.2 Potentialities of HUL 110

5.2.1 Conceptualising complexity 110 5.2.2 Urban planning tools 112 5.2.3 Boundaries 114 5.2.4 Leading change 115 5.2.5 Community and communities 115

5.3 Framework for Stage2 115 5.3.1 Engaging Ballarat’s community 116 5.3.2 Defining 116 5.3.3 Understanding 117 5.3.4 Pressures 119 5.3.5 Directions 120

5.4 Delivering the HUL approach 121 5.4.1 Resourcing and relationships 121 5.4.2 Keeping everyone informed and involved 121 5.4.3 What will the outcomes of Stage 2 look like? 121

5.5 In summary 121

REFERENCES 123

References consulted in Stage 1 123 Resources for Stage 2 125

APPENDIX 1: FIELD RECORD SHEET 126

APPENDIX 2: THEMATIC ANALYSIS 129

APPENDIX 3: IAP2 SPECTRUM OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION 161

MAPPING BALLARAT’S HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE: STAGE 1

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1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Project Ballarat’s landscape today is the culmination of thousands of years of land management and change, not least the gold story which is of national significance. Ballarat is not just a collection of historic buildings, events, precincts or separate spaces but a whole landscape, layered, complex, and nuanced and one that can be celebrated as being unique from other places.

Naturally the Ballarat landscape will continue to develop, as the preparation of the City of Ballarat’s Strategy Today, Tomorrow, Together recognises, and it is vital that the cultural and social values attributed to this unique urban landscape are retained, revitalised and celebrated. This project is the first stage of a larger project designed to understand this landscape from community and wider perspectives, and to develop new and more integrated ways to manage all its values.

There is an increasing recognition both in Australia and internationally that all landscapes matter, from outstanding to everyday and that landscape, both urban and rural, should be viewed as a whole and not as specific places for protection. In this report, landscape is far more than the visual landscape. The definition of landscape and ‘historic urban landscape’ is examined in Chapter 2.

The UNESCO recommendations on Historic Urban Landscapes in 2012 has offered the City of Ballarat an exciting model to guide the development of new approaches to managing Ballarat’s historic and contemporary urban landscapes. This model, the principles and processes that underpin it and the opportunities it offers are explored in Chapter 2 of this report.

This project will form one of a series of international pilot projects that are contributing to the development of methodologies of mapping and understanding the values of historic cities and their settings – the Historic Urban Landscapes approach. It will also make a significant contribution to the City of Ballarat’s Strategy which will provide a long-term, integrated and overarching land-use strategy for the whole municipality.

1.2 Objectives

1.2.1 The overall project The goal for the project as a whole – that is for Stages 1 and 2 - is to provide an ‘evidence-based, holistic, integrated and community-led’ analysis of Ballarat, creating a rich and nuanced understanding of its values, and resulting in a Statement of Significance that will guide the development of effective and integrated management tools to ensure that what is valued is retained in the city’s landscape into the future.

In essence therefore, the project as a whole will involve:

understanding the complexity and diversity of community values and perceptions, engaging with the communities of Ballarat, and recognising too the values held by wider communities – visitors, researchers, Victorians and Australians

mapping and recording in other ways the values embodied in and expressed through Ballarat’s historic urban landscape to ensure that what is valued is not lost

understanding how Ballarat is changing and will change into the future as a result of external forces, and how the shared vision of a desired future for the municipality can be achieved

defining the urban landscape management tools – strategies, policies, plans and guidance – that are needed to retain valued landscape attributes in the face of change; some of these


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tools may already exist but others may need to be invented to suit Ballarat’s particular circumstances.

Other projects currently underway through the City of Ballarat will contribute to the achievement of these bold goals, including strategic planning processes such as the Ballarat Strategy.

Implementation of the completed project may well involve further investigations. And recognising that values may change over time and new threats to those values may emerge, the recommendations arising from this historic urban landscape project will need to encompass review and continuing adaptation.

1.2.2 Scope of Stage 1 Stage 1 has a more limited goal: it is to provide an indicative characterisation of Ballarat’s historic urban landscape which will then be tested with all stakeholders and refined in Stage 2, enabling a comprehensive Statement of Significance and urban landscape management tools to be developed. Stage 1 of the project examined the whole of the municipality of the City of Ballarat and was essentially an exploratory phase.

Specifically, the scope of and tasks in Stage 1 were defined as:

1 – Landscape typology and characterisation: This involved a number of inter-related tasks and represents the main body of work undertaken in Stage 1, and included:

Developing a framework for the indicative characterisation mapping, including examining the HUL approach and relating it to other landscape characterisation models

Examining the range of data available on the City of Ballarat – historic and contemporary maps, plans, reports (and other documentary sources), including evidence of community-held values

Through overlaying of selected data sets identifying key historic urban landscape types and a working draft of potential character areas

Testing and refining this analysis and the potential character areas through field study using a consistent approach

Through a visual analysis identifying significant landscape elements, reference points and viewpoints, and examining the visual experience offered by key travel routes

Consultation with a selection of community informants to start to understand the diversity and complexity of community readings of the landscape.

2- Stage 2 methodology Another key task for Stage 1 was to develop a methodology to guide Stage 2. The requirements included:

Defining a community engagement plan for community input into the final characterisation, building on the Ballarat Imagine initiative that forms part of the development of the Ballarat Strategy

Review and refinement of the draft indicative characterisation developed in Stage 1, identifying the work required to test and develop it into a more comprehensive model that explicitly encompassed community values, historic themes and contemporary perceptions

How best to develop a comprehensive and over-arching Statement of Significance that would guide urban landscape management approaches.

As Stage 1 progressed, the shape of Stage 2 was explored through meetings with the ‘brains trust’, project control group, team meetings and other community-based consultations.


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3 – Reporting The final task was to develop a report that encompassed the two aspects of Stage 1 described above. The report was developed in several parts with progressive review by the project control group and the ‘brains trust’ members.

In developing the final report for Stage 1, the project team has endeavoured to establish the best possible basis for Stage 2. Recognising that Stage 1 has been exploratory, we have tried to document the paths we explored and some of the ideas that emerged. An example is the framing of Chapter 3 as Ways of seeing Ballarat, expressed through a combination of text, maps and images. Through the Stage 1 work, we recognised that there are many ways of seeing the historic urban landscape and that one of the important purposes of this project was to reveal this multiplicity, rather than condense it into a single, deterministic view.

In the same vein, we recognise that the landscape characterisation work that has formed a significant component of Stage 1 presents a view from the outside, based on skilled and technically-based process, and informed by research and reading. In Stage 2, one of the tasks will be to explore the internal or community perspectives, comparing and contrasting them with each other and with the perspective presented in the Stage 1 report. This will open up an exciting and completely new approach in planning for valued urban landscapes.

Much remains to be explored in Stage 2.

1.2.3 Review and consultation Project Control Group A Project Control Group (PCG) was established by the City of Ballarat to oversee Stage 1 of the project. The consultant team met with the PCG on three occasions. The PCG comprised: Susan Fayad, Jason Forest, Tim Grace and Jessie Keating of the City Strategy Unit.

Susan Fayad, Heritage Coordinator, City of Ballarat conceived of the project, convened the PCG and Brains trust and worked actively with the consultants throughout Stage 1.

Brains Trust Throughout Stage 1 the consultant team participated in a ‘brains trust’ group established by the City of Ballarat. This group met three times and offered a forum for the exchange of ideas and perspectives; it did not have a role in the supervision of the consultants. ‘Brains trust’ members included officers from the City of Ballarat, Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley from Deakin University’s Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific, and David McGuinness, PhD candidate, University of Ballarat. Consultant team participants included from Context - John Dyke, Annabel Neylon, Chris Johnston and Louise Honman, and from Urban Initiatives Tim Hart and Leila Griffiths.

Community organisations While community engagement was not the focus of Stage 1, the consultant team met with several local community organisations to start exploring ways of engaging with and understanding different community perspectives on Ballarat’s historic urban landscape, including:

The consultants met with representatives of Ballarat East Network and spent several hours with them looking at parts of Ballarat East and exploring what they valued in the Ballart East urban landscape.

There are two Aboriginal traditional owner groups now recognised as Registered Aboriginal Parties (RAPs) under the Aboriginal Heritage Act for parts of the municipality: Wathaurung Aboriginal Corporation (trading as Wadawurrung) and Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation (DDWCAC):

the consultants met with Wadawurrung representatives Bonnie Fagan and Sean Fagan on several occasions and benefited from their perspectives on the landscape of their traditional


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country. Wadawurrung have been undertaking cultural mapping across their RAP area working with Victoria University, are keen to bring their perspectives into the project.

Susan Fayad spoke with representatives from Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation on several occasions.

It is hoped that in Stage 2 of the project it will be possible to hold a meeting with both RAPs to discuss their perspectives on their traditional country. Ballarat has also long been home to Aboriginal people from many parts of Victoria and their historical associations need to be considered.

Research organisations and archives During Stage 1 the consultants were able to access records, research and archival materials from a range of Ballarat-based organisations, including:

Public Record Office Ballarat

Sovereign Hill Gold Museum.

1.2.4 Limitations Stage 1 was undertaken within a limited timeframe to enable the results of the work to feed into the Ballarat Strategy and to inform discussions at a symposium on the HUL approach in September 2013 that is being sponsored by the City of Ballarat.

Overall the scope anticipated for Stage 1 was achieved; however the timeframe limited the amount of background data that could be effectively synthesised, leaving some of this potential work for Stage 2. The community values expressed through the Ballarat Imagine consultation were made available to the consultants, and some specific analysis of the data was possible, however the consultants were not able to influence the questions asked.

1.3 Project Team The project team has been led by John Dyke (Context) and supported by Annabel Neylon, Chris Johnston, and Louise Honman. Urban Initiatives, provided support on mapping and visualisation of the indicative characterisation through the work of Tim Hart and Leila Griffiths. All team members contributed to shaping the methodology for Stage 2.

1.4 Acknowledgements The consultants gratefully acknowledge the contributions of many individuals and organisations to the development of Stage 1 of the project, including:

City of Ballarat officers: Susan Fayad, Jason Forest, Tim Grace, Jessie Keating, Andrew Bishop, Matt Swards (GIS), Christine Holloway (Records)

Deakin University: Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley

Ballarat East Network (BE Net): Erin McCuskey and Diane Chester

Wadawurrung: Bonnie Fagan and Sean Fagan

PROV Ballarat: Lauren Bourke and Liz Denny

Sovereign Hill Gold Museum: Claire Muir

University of Ballarat: David McGuiness (PhD student).


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2 THE HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE (HUL) APPROACH

2.1 Introduction The historic urban landscape is a new concept, built on established heritage practice in Australia and internationally. This section provides an overview of the ‘historic urban landscape’ approach, starting with its genesis in the World Heritage arena, what it promises and how the concept has been applied in Stage 1 of this project.

The development of a new approach to urban heritage has emerged in the last ten years. Now known as the Historic Urban Landscape or HUL approach, it seeks new ways to understand valued urban landscapes, especially where changing social, economic and environmental circumstances are subjecting these places to increasing pressure.

As the name indicates, the historic urban landscape approach is based on understanding the whole of the urban landscape and the many ways that values are expressed in that environment. This represents a significant change from past approaches which emphasised the built form and the architectural and aesthetic qualities of discrete elements and precincts within urban areas, and sought protection regimes designed to limit change without addressing either the overall dynamics of an urban system or the diffuse nature of values. These aspects are explored below.

2.2 The emergence of the Historic Urban Landscape approach After the Second World War, and responding to that period of massive destruction and human dislocation, a new focus on cultural heritage emerged. In Australia this was evident in the formation of National Trusts in each state, starting community campaigns for the protection of buildings at risk in the post-war development boom. The buildings focused on were typically early mansions. In Australia this also represented a realisation that the nation had a history and a heritage worthy of recognition and protection. Natural environments had already been recognised through public land reserves and national parks, and some Aboriginal heritage places had been recognised, although Aboriginal people were still suffering substantial dislocation from country and were engaged in fighting for political rights and social justice.

Internationally, the concept of heritage was framed as ‘monuments and sites’, individual elements rather than precincts and areas. Framing documents such as the international Venice Charter (1964) and in Australia the Burra Charter (1979) started to formalise approaches to understanding cultural heritage and to build a community of professionals across a range of disciplines who were engaged with these ideas.

Gradually, the focus moved from individual buildings to precincts, and the types of places expanded to include non-built elements such as gardens, trees, landscapes and so on. More recent is the appreciation that cultural heritage includes both tangible and the intangible elements. In Australian heritage practice the adoption of a values-based approach through the progressive development of the Burra Charter encouraged a broader understanding of place and values well before this became evident in Europe.

The shift from protection of physical attributes of heritage places as static ‘monuments’ to the recognition and protection of values is a significant paradigm shift and one that has enabled the HUL concept to be advanced. Some of the factors that have lead to this expansion of societal perspectives include the recognition of community diversity, the valuing of personal and collective identities, increasing democratisation of and participation in government processes.

Today historic cities are the largest category on the World Heritage List, comprising more than 25% (260 out of more than 911 places in 2010 (Oers, powerpoint), with the majority of urban World Heritage sites being in Europe. As Oers notes ‘this makes cities the most abundant and diverse category of humankind’s common heritage’ (Oers 2006: 1); this is true in terms of what is recognised today at least.


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On the international stage, the World Heritage Convention was established in 1972. Early World Heritage inscriptions focused on a ‘monumental approach’ where architectural and formal aesthetic qualities dominated, but by the 1980s a broader approach was developing which emphasised the ‘context and setting of urban heritage’ and started to recognise the ‘social and cultural processes’ that shape cities and urban areas (Oers 2006: 2). The urban places inscribed reflected this deliberate broadening. But under the Operational Guidelines – the key guiding document for the conservation and management of World Heritage properties - historic areas were still treated as ‘groups of separate or connected buildings’ rather than as rich, complex and layered urban landscapes (Oers 2006:1; Operational Guidelines in Oers 2006:6).

A key step in the development of the historic urban landscapes concept, as it is being explored in this project, was the a 2005 conference in Vienna which resulted in the Vienna Memorandum, and a subsequent series of international debates that ultimately resulted in the adoption of a new UNESCO ‘standard setting instrument’ on the Historic Urban Landscape in 2011 (UNESCO 2011). This document recognises the need to ‘integrate historic urban area conservation, management and planning strategies into local development processes and urban planning’ through the application of a ‘landscape approach’. The historic urban landscape is understood to result from the ‘historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes’ and includes the ‘broader urban context’. Some of the key elements of the HUL approach are described in the following section.

In parallel, landscape and more particularly cultural landscapes, initially defined as the ‘combined works of nature and man’ became an area of increasing interest in the World Heritage domain. Landscape as a concept comes with its own long inheritance, and one that is strongly culturally defined. In a paper prepared as part of the present project, Dr Steven Cooke (2013) explored the development of the cultural landscapes concept. In particular he points to the idea of landscape – or for that matter ‘place’ – as a text that can be read. One interpretation is of landscape as a fixed text where the physicality of the landscape is the product of the past, materialising ideas and practices. Landscape can provide a singular and shared reading, a ‘meta-narrative’ that speaks for and to all. An example in Ballarat could be the way that the story of gold is interpreted as being present in the landscape.

On the other hand, each person through their own experience, personal history and relationship with place, inevitably brings their own reading. Cooke links this idea to the work of Roland Barthes. In the context of Australian heritage practice, such ideas are also closely linked to social significance methodologies.

A variety of approaches have been used to bring community-held perceptions and values into an understanding of the landscape as a way of determining the best management approaches. For example, perception studies run by the emerging landscape profession in the 1970s sought ways to understand and bring into public policy formation processes, visual appreciations of landscape. While this approach has been largely discredited for its tendency to over-simplify the complex nature of the relationships between people and place, the importance of understanding these relationships is fundamental to the HUL approach. Another of many examples is the Landscape Character Assessment methodology developed in the UK during the 1980s and 90s. Landscape characterisation provides a consistent methodology that crosses boundaries, encourages stakeholder involvement and seeks to balance views and outcomes in managing the landscape. Its underlying philosophy is that ‘all landscapes matter’, and it turns away from the idea that only some landscapes are special or of ‘high’ value.

There is a creative tension and dynamic tension between the ‘real’ world of place that we inhabit constantly and often without attention to its affectiveness, the interpreted landscape in which we read shared ‘meta-narratives’, and the very personal and experiential landscape of our lives and our imaginations. This HUL-based project offers the opportunity to explore and appreciate all of these different readings, but to do so requires development of some new approaches that can be practically applied. This is discussed further below.


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2.3 Defining HUL and the HUL approach The Historic Urban Landscape approach is formally defined in the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape adopted on 10 November 2011.This documents, presents, in a concise form, the results of several years of discussions at an international level about urban landscapes, their conservation and management.

2.3.1 Purpose The overriding purpose of a new approach is expressed as the need to recognise the ‘dynamic nature of cities’ and the complexity of their ‘urban heritage’ that is embodied in the ‘historic layering’ of fabric, values, cultures, traditions and experiences – both past and contemporary. Acknowledgement of the multiplicity of all of these aspects is a key.

The HUL approach is therefore two-fold – first it is about understanding the historic urban landscape and how it is valued, and second it is about seeking new practices and tools to better manage change in urban landscapes so that all the many aspects of what is valued – material/tangible, social and cultural - are sustained.

The historic urban landscape approach aims at:

‘… preserving the quality of the human environment, enhancing the productive and sustainable use of urban spaces, while recognizing their dynamic character, and promoting social and functional diversity. It integrates the goals of urban heritage conservation and those of social and economic development. It is rooted in a balanced and sustainable relationship between the urban and natural environment, between the needs of present and future generations and the legacy from the past.’ (UNESCO 2011, Article 11).

2.3.2 Defining historic urban landscape The formal definition reads:

The historic urban landscape is the urban area understood as the result of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of “historic centre” or “ensemble” to include the broader urban context and its geographical setting.

This wider context includes notably the site’s topography, geomorphology, hydrology and natural features, its built environment, both historic and contemporary, its infrastructures above and below ground, its open spaces and gardens, its land use patterns and spatial organization, perceptions and visual relationships, as well as all other elements of the urban structure. It also includes social and cultural practices and values, economic processes and the intangible dimensions of heritage as related to diversity and identity. (UNESCO 2011, Articles 9 & 10).

Key ideas embedded in this definition seek to extend the notion of urban heritage from the individual place and the narrowly defined ‘historic district’ to recognise that urban heritage values – or cultural significance - may be embodied in many aspects of the urban environment:

In the materiality of the urban environment: places, areas, landmarks, spaces, views, setting

In the memories, stories and traditions that form part of the shared aspects of identity for an urban community as a whole, or for parts of that community (self-defined by factors such as locality, ethnicity, culture, experience etc).

In the spatial and dynamic processes in that urban environment: its spatial patterns and relationships; in the flows of people, goods, information and knowledge; in its economic activity.


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2.3.3 Approaches To address these expansive concepts and goals, the historic urban landscape approach seeks to:

Integrate conservation within sustainable development

Take a whole of landscape approach to planning, management and intervention in the urban environment

Address policy, governance and management

Engage with stakeholders

Learn from the traditions and perceptions of local communities (UNESCO 2011).

2.3.4 New tools The HUL approach proposes that new urban management tools be developed, recognising that each place and cultural setting may need different tools. The four types of tools are:

1. Civic engagement tools designed to empower people to identify key values in their urban areas, articulate their aspirations and visions, set goals and agree on actions to safeguard their heritage and promote sustainable development.

2. Knowledge and planning tools to enable understanding of the urban landscape, recognition of cultural significance, and provide for the assessment and monitoring of change.

3. Regulatory systems to enable the effective conservation and management of valued aspects of the urban landscape, tangible and intangible, and the integration of change.

4. Financial tools designed to help build capacity, support private and public investment and partnerships.

The first two tools relate to understanding values, and all four tools are relevant to management.

Steps The diagram below indicates the key steps likely to be used in applying the HUL approach.

Critical steps recommended by the HUL approach (Adapted from UNESCO, 2011)


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2.3.5 From an Australian perspective Heritage practice in Australia has followed a different path from that evident in much of the mainstream practice in Europe. For example, the definition of place in the 1979 Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS) since refined and expanded in subsequent versions, substantially expanded on the notion of monuments expressed in the 1964 Venice Charter (ICOMOS) and included setting. It also advanced the notion of cultural significance, and over time this has emerged onto the international scene as a ‘values-based approach’. The Australia ICOMOS definition of cultural significance is embedded in UNESCO’s 2011 Recommendations on the Historic Urban Landscape.

From an Australian perspective the naming of the new approach as ‘historic urban landscape’ appears narrow. Australian heritage practice recognises historic as one value, albeit a complex and layered value. Further, the recognition of communities as the holders of some heritage values and as the primary source for understanding such values dates back more than 20 years in Australian heritage practice. Communities have been involved in many types of local, regional and thematic heritage studies, not just as knowledge-holders but also playing a role in identifying values.

On the other hand, in Australia the term landscape tends to be reserved for natural areas, designed and seen landscapes, although the national theme of ‘inspirational landscapes’ established a somewhat broader frame of reference and engaging with ideas of emotional and spiritual response to landscape.

Another difference is the nature of urban development in Australia. Many Australian towns and cities established quickly, initiated through global processes of colonial settlement, and accelerated in the case of Ballarat and many other cities by the discovery of a potential source of wealth – gold. The story of urban settlement is often one of massive transformation of the landscape within a handful of years or decades, rather than slow accretion over centuries. The distinction between ‘historic centre’ and modern may not be apparent in the way it is in European cities, and homogeneity may be limited to a few small areas. In urban areas recognised as significant, evidence of diversity and multiple development periods are often more important than consistency and a singular period of development.

The Australian legislative framework does not currently encompass the full breadth of Australian practice, nor the HUL approach. For example, protective mechanisms are limited to physical fabric, and often there are different approaches to public and private places, especially public spaces and infrastructure. The approaches adopted vary across the country, with the primary legislative frameworks being provided by state and territory governments and the main protection provided at local government level. Heritage is usually managed as a part of town planning, and there are only limited connections between physical expressions of heritage and cultural expressions.

There are different legislative and approval systems in the natural and cultural environments, and Aboriginal heritage whether ancient or contemporary is usually administered separately, although increasingly with direct Aboriginal community involvement and increasing respect for community-held knowledge.

The national government has a very limited role in relation to heritage, and focuses on the National Heritage List of outstanding and iconic places. Having been a leader in the development of heritage practice in the past, the national government has currently chosen a narrower role. One important initiative that continues is the State of Environment reporting at a national level and this process includes examination of natural and cultural heritage places.

So while Australia is well placed to contribute to the development of the HUL approach, and some aspects of our heritage practice offers us a springboard, in other ways the issues that have motivated development of this approach internationally are equally true in Australia.


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2.4 Applying this approach to Ballarat

2.4.1 Past studies The City of Ballarat has been active in the processes of identifying and assessing cultural heritage places over many years. The first Ballarat heritage study was undertaken in 1978, one of a set of early heritage studies undertaken with State and Commonwealth government support. In Ballarat, ‘the aim was to assist in the amendment of the 1966 Ballarat and District Planning Scheme and to identify places requiring protection’ (Clinch 2012: 89). While led by a team of heritage architects (Wendy Jacobs, Nigel Lewis and Liz Vines), the study engaged a well-known historian Paul de Serville to write a ‘short physical history based on Weston Bate's history of Ballarat published the same year’ (Clinch 2012: 89). The study identified individual buildings and precincts, with the precincts defined as areas with ‘some consistency in form or character’ (Clinch 2012: 90). The scope of the places identified was broad including ‘commercial, residential, public and institutional, railways, cemeteries, botanic gardens located around Lake Wendouree, public spaces, street works, fences, landscaping and advertising’ (Clinch 2012: 117). The study lead to a separate set of conservation guidelines published in 1981, another initiative that was amongst the first of its kind (Clinch 2012: 116).

From this early work, the City of Ballarat continued to support the investigation of heritage places during the 1980s, and as the city expanded through amalgamation with adjoining municipalities, a 1998 study examined the previous Shires of Sebastopol, Buninyong, Ballarat and Bungaree, continuing a narrative based on the themes of ‘former shire’, ‘land around Buninyong’ and ‘forest and chocolate soils’ which demonstrated some continued commitment to the use of original themes (Clinch 2012: 192).

Other studies included the 2003 Ballarat Heritage Study and 2006 Ballarat heritage precincts study which resulted in further planning scheme amendments (Clinch 2012: 243). In all, there are now over 10,000 places within the heritage overlay areas - the majority considered of heritage significance. Since then, Council has established a Heritage Advisory Committee made up of key stakeholders and community representatives, developed a heritage strategy Preserving our heritage strategy (2010), employs specialist staff to deliver heritage programs, develop policy and provide heritage advice, and commissioned a further heritage study of the former Shire of Sebastopol.

2.4.2 The Stage 1 project Background The City of Ballarat today comprises a large regional city set within a diverse rural and forested landscape and several smaller townships. The city is changing, and population growth pressures are converting rural land into residential subdivisions, following the common Australian trend where growth occurs on the outskirts of a city. Its relative proximity to Melbourne is one of numerous factors creating these growth pressures.

In response to these pressures the City of Ballarat decided to embark on the development of a new strategic plan Today Tomorrow Together: The Ballarat Strategy with a historic urban landscape study (Mapping Ballarat’s Historic Urban Landscape) as a core part of the strategy. The strategy aims to guide future growth and development, the provision of infrastructure and service delivery and to help Council respond to important social, economic and environmental challenges. The strategy will apply to the whole municipality.

Relationship to the Ballarat Strategy The Ballarat Strategy has been the key driver of this project. It has determined the timing, direction and focus of Stage 1. It is important to recognise that this is a new type of project and has not previously been undertaken in Ballarat or in other municipalities across Victoria. It is, in essence, a pilot project, aimed at exploring how the Historic Urban Landscape of Ballarat can be understood and how the HUL approach might be applied to Ballarat. In this exploratory process, the key product needed to inform The Ballarat Strategy was the Indicative Characterisation Framework (Section 4).


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As such, the method for this stage has been deliberately fluid, responding to the suggestions and direction of the ‘Brains Trust’ group, and where appropriate, responding to the needs of the end users of the document, including Council officers from the City of Ballarat.

Designing the methodology for Stage 1 Stage 1 of the historic landscape study Mapping Ballarat’s Historic Urban Landscape was designed to:

start the development of a historic landscape approach for Ballarat – that is to explore ideas about and resources available to support the HUL approach

develop and deliver an indicative landscape characterisation framework as an input into the Ballarat Strategy (see Section 4)

develop a HUL based methodology that could be applied in Stage 2 (see Section 5).

The methodology used to deliver the outcomes of the Stage 1 report included:

Identification of significant resources which could inform our understanding of the place. These resources ranged from the views of the community of Ballarat, taken from an analysis of the Ballarat Imagine (a community engagement activity run by City of Ballarat as part of the Ballarat Strategy) through to identifying and exploring a sample of the rich primary and secondary sources held in a variety of repositories in Ballarat and Melbourne.

Interrogation of ideas as to what makes Ballarat distinctive, or unique in Victoria, or Australia. This involved exploring various ways of looking at Ballarat – from an historical thematic perspective, exploring community values and the many ways of seeing and representing the contemporary urban landscape of the municipality to begin to understand what it was that makes Ballarat distinctive.

Developing and applying a landscape characterisation method and framework, and applying this across the municipality. The aim of the indicative characterisation framework is to describe in broad terms the landscape of the municipality as seen today and particularly those features and qualities that make areas distinct from each other. It is based on desk study and field survey and used a team approach to discuss and reach a consensus on the indicative character areas. The framework was developed through an initial study of various map layers followed by field visits to test potential areas of different character. This resulted in a draft indicative characterisation map, which was refined after discussion with the Brains Trust group. Following further refinements two indicative character maps were drawn up. One at the municipal scale which identified 12 character areas including the urban core of Ballarat and a second at the urban core scale which identified a further 13 character areas (See Section 4.4). It is envisaged that as new, community-based and analytical or ways of seeing the urban landscape emerge in subsequent stages, these ‘layers’ will be added, and the areas revised.

Preparation of a methodology framework to guide how a second stage of this study might be undertaken, including recommendations for further work in specific areas. This has been developed through review of published material on the HUL approach, our experience, the findings of the Stage 1 study and discussion with the Brains Trust group.

3 WAYS OF SEEING BALLARAT

3.1 Introduction In this first stage of the project, we have briefly examined the evolution of the historic urban landscape of the whole of the City of Ballarat municipality, sampled some evidence on community identity and values and examined some aspects of the distinctiveness of this historic urban landscape and its wider setting.


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This preliminary analysis has revealed a great richness of information, indicating the value of a more detailed analysis in Stage 2 of the project.

In Stage 1, our primary focus has been the work on characterisation which is reported in Chapter 4.

3.2 Seeing through the layers of history The history of Ballarat is complex and rich. Prior to occupation of the land by colonisers from Europe, this landscape was the traditional country of the Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples for millennia. As such it is a landscape rich with evidence of creation, of the lives of countless generations of Aboriginal people, of the plants, and animals nurtured through ceremony and land management. Their stories reflect a deep past and a continuing connection, despite the frontier times and displacement on top missions.

The story of gold is also an important one: it created the wealth on which the city was built and supported its rapid development, changing parts of the landscape irrevocably. But it is not the only story. Equally, the story of democracy is linked to the Eureka story.

3.2.1 Looking at the past from the present The historic urban landscape can be appreciated on many levels and at different scales, and each contributing to an appreciation of the whole. The past can be evident in the environment – for example through the spatial layout of a town, in buildings, and in the landscape. It can also be expressed through knowledge, traditions and culture. Some aspects of the past will be expressed through stories that are important nationally, other aspects will relate to smaller localities and neighbourhoods.

The past is read from the present and what we see and what we value is a product of who we are today – as individuals, families, neighbourhoods and wider communities. The past is read by many different eyes – each person bringing their own experience of the place, knowledge, history and interests to their reading. And while each reading will be individual, many ideas and perspectives are likely to be shared.

Heritage too is dynamic. It is a product of what we value today, and such values may change in the future, just as they did in the past.

One of the ways of looking at the urban landscape is to ask which parts reflect aspects of history that we want to acknowledge and retain, and that make this place distinctive in the eyes of local people, or to a broader community such as Victorians or Australians. Themes are commonly used in heritage studies as a framework through which to look at the evidence of the past in the urban landscape. This way of examining the urban landscape is explored in the next section.

3.1.2 Using themes to explore the past To prompt broader thinking about Ballarat’s distinctiveness at a local, state and national level, we used the Australian Historic Themes (AHC 2001) and Victoria’s Framework of Historical Themes (Heritage Council of Victoria 2010). This is a preliminary analysis, and is expected to be built upon and consolidated in the second stage of the project.

In developing this framework, a number of secondary sources were reviewed to inform our understanding of the historic urban landscape of Ballarat. These included heritage studies commissioned and prepared over the last 15 years and various secondary sources, including citations from the Australian Heritage Database, Weston Bate’s two volume history of Ballarat and Robert Freestone’s work, Urban Nation – Australia’s planning heritage (2010). The results of this further analysis are summarised below and detailed in an extensive table in Appendix 2.

Our preliminary analysis found that there are key themes which have had a continuous shaping influence on the development and identity of Ballarat, often over several of the distinct time periods identified by Bate, and across generations. Other themes are highly important at one moment in time, but their overall influence on the shaping of Ballarat is limited to that specific


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time period. An example of this is Australian subtheme 7.2.2 Struggling for inclusion in the political process which relates to the Eureka rebellion in 1854. While the events which took place at the Eureka rebellion in 1854 are considered highly important to the community of Ballarat and are expressed as part of local identity, the impact of the events at Eureka in 1854 have probably had a greater impact on the development and identity of democracy in Victoria and Australia than on the historic urban landscape of Ballarat.

The Eureka story illustrates that not all themes are expressed tangibly in the urban landscape: the Eureka story is an important element in local community identity and this was expressed in Ballarat Imagine. But on the ground, the tangible expression of the story is a new building. The flag remains an oft-used symbol, and people feel that the ‘spirit’ lives on.

It also illustrates that themes and their expressions – tangible and intangible are not fixed. They can and will develop and

change as part of the ongoing story of a place and its communities.

Some places and themes seen as important by the community of Ballarat are also important to the wider Victorian and Australian population. An example is the fine civic linear park which extends the length of Sturt Street, an element of the historic landscape that is highly valued by the Ballarat community. The park is an expression of civic pride and wealth emanating from mining. The substantial boulevard, complete with monuments, statuary, built structures, fountains and European trees exemplifies Ballarat’s grand ambitions and civic metamorphosis from mining town into regional centre (Freestone 2010). In his thematic study of urban development and town planning, Freestone recognises Ballarat’s Sturt Street as a notable example of this metamorphosis nationally.

In the second stage, further thought should be given to the relative significance of elements of Ballarat’s historic landscape as evidence of national and Victorian themes, and therefore the importance of Ballarat as an exemplar. This would find expression in the Statement of Significance which will be developed in Stage 2.

The next section presents first the key Victorian themes and then the key Australian themes that are of particular relevance for Ballarat. The sources used in this analysis are listed in References, and in Appendix 2. There are many more sources that can be used in Stage 2 to enrich how we can see through the layers of history.


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Shaping the land

Australian theme: Tracing the evolution of the Australian continent 1.3 Assessing scientifically diverse environments

Victorian theme: Shaping Victoria’s environment 1.3 Understanding scientifically diverse environments

View from Sovereign Hill

The fabric and history of the historic urban landscape is shaped by the underlying geomorphology which is unusual and unique within Victoria

Peopling the land

Australian theme: Peopling Australia 2.1 Living as Australia’s earliest inhabitants

Victorian theme: Peopling Victoria’s places and landscapes 2.1 Living as Victoria’s earliest inhabitants

Mount Bolton

Wadawurrung and Dj Dja Wurrung people have lived in their traditional country for millennia. It is a cultural landscape shaped by people and imbued with important cultural and spiritual meanings.

Australian theme: Peopling Australia 2.4.2 Migrating to seek opportunity

Victorian theme: Peopling Victoria’s places and landscapes 2.5 Migrating and making a home

St Alpius Church on Victoria Street

From 1837 new migrants have arrived in Ballarat and shaped the environment, from pastoralists to gold miners of various nationalities, through to post-World War Two migrants and latter day refugee groups. The different nationalities, their belief systems, practices and values have shaped the development of the landscape. The scale of the migration in the early gold rush period was extraordinary.

Transforming and managing the land

Australian theme: Developing local, regional and national economies 3.4 Utilising natural resources (3.4.3 Mining)

Victorian theme: Transforming and managing the land 4.5 Gold mining

Mining at Black Hill

The 1851 Ballarat gold rush, and its continuing gold mining activities which have peaked and troughed over the past 160 years have had a major impact on Ballarat, Victoria, and to a lesser degree Australia.

The events at Eureka in 1854 are part of the gold story, and therefore have importance at a National level.


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Australian theme: Developing local, regional and national economies 3.11 Altering the environment

Victorian theme: Transforming and managing the land 4.7 transforming the land and waterways

Mining remains at Bonshaw

The landscape of Ballarat has been altered dramatically through human intervention. This includes Aboriginal burning practice, pastoral deforestation, creation and removal of mullock heaps and mining infrastructure such as sludge pits, dams, tailing pits (etc) through to the re-routing of water course, creation of dams and engineering methods whereby natural water courses were straightened and deepened to reduce the incidence of flooding. The impact of mining has been particularly significant in terms of how it has transformed the landscape of Ballarat.

Building Industries

Australian theme: Developing local, regional and national economies 3.13 Developing an Australian manufacturing capacity

Victorian theme: Building Victoria’s Industries and workforce 5.2 Developing a manufacturing capacity

Market stockyards at Delacombe

The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century prominence of the Phoenix foundry saw new technologies developed whereby a foundry which specialised in boiler making for the mining industry diversified into steam engines, creating a model which became adopted across railways Australia wide.

The early pastoral and mining industries created an early demand for a localised manufacturing capacity, primarily in the production of iron implements as well as the manufacture of goods from raw materials. Over time, the manufacturing industry, its buildings and workforce have expanded and diversified into the production of a range of goods, clothing, food and drink, building materials.

Towns and cities

Australian theme: Building settlements, towns and cities 4.1 Planning urban settlements; 4.5 Settlements to serve rural Australia

Victorian theme: Building towns, cities and the garden state 6.4 Making regional centres

Sturt Street, Ballarat

From the mid 1850s, Ballarat perceived itself as an important place, rivalling the major capital city of Melbourne. Early survey maps and the fabric of Ballarat’s historic urban core show the town’s early aspirations as a regional centre and a strong sense of Ballarat as being independent of Melbourne. The architecture, layout, civic displays and plantings (amongst other elements) expresses the early independent wealth and importance of the town as a wealth generator for the state of Victoria and its capital, Melbourne. Beyond the nineteenth century, Ballarat has developed a more dependent relationship with its hinterland and the wider region, to become a more conventional regional centre. While in the nineteenth century, gold, industry, rail, manufacturing, trade were the key elements of the development of Ballarat as a regional centre, in the twentieth century, this has been superseded by Ballarat’s role as a provider of education, tourism, commerce and a trade centre.


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Governing

Australian theme: Developing institutions of self-government and democracy 7.2.2 Struggling for inclusion in the political process

Victorian theme: Governing Victorians 7.2 Struggling for political rights

Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka

The Eureka Stockade uprising of 3 December 1854 is of National importance to Australia for its impact on the process of democratizing colonial government in Australia and more widely the Australian colonies. The Eureka Stockade uprising is considered to be part of the national experience.

The 1854 Eureka rebellion was a ‘flash-point’ in history with far reaching consequences. The uprising of a group of miners against recognised Goldfields authority led to fairer legislation for the goldfields with the Gold licence [the cause of the uprising] replaced by the cheaper Miners Right, which also gave the vote to miners. Various other political changes were achieved, helping the process of democratizing colonial government in Victoria and more widely the Australian colonies.

Building Communities

Australian theme: Educating 6.2 Establishing schools

Victorian theme: Building community life 8.2 Educating people

East Ballarat Public Library

Ballarat has a long tradition of education, providing education to those who live within the municipality and drawing on a broad hinterland. Various types of education have been established and celebrated: From the very beginnings, citizens struggled to form organisations for self-betterment such as Mechanics Institutes, libraries, reading rooms and education for their children. Almost all small rural settlements had a primary school, and the larger settlements of Buninyong, Learmonth, West Ballarat, Ballarat East and Coghills Creek all had Mechanics institutes or free libraries. The theme of Education continues to technical schools such as the Agricultural High School and the School of Mines, and later the Australian Catholic University (started in Ballarat in 1909 by the Sisters of Mercy) and the University of Ballarat.


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3.3 Seeing the urban landscape through maps Another way of seeing the urban landscape is through images and maps. In this section we start with historical maps and then use contemporary maps to examine this place, first in its regional setting and then on the City of Ballarat itself.

Each map offers information. It presents the urban landscape in a particular way through what it includes and excludes, and the particular emphasis it gives. There are many ways the same information can be mapped.

3.3.1 Maps from the past There is a wealth of historic mapping available to the City of Ballarat which can be used to provide a rich understanding of the evolution of the historic urban landscape. Each map reveals what the map-maker saw as important information to be shared, or legally documented for example. They are a window into past times and perspectives.

Used singly or in combination, these maps can provide us with a way of understand changing landscapes and perspectives. They prompt questions, and invite us to reflect.

We have selected a number of historic maps and map extracts to illustrate the early development of Ballarat and its municipality. These early maps in particular convey as much information about the underlying topographic features as the subsequent imposition of the surveyor’s regular grid patterns. An example of this is the extract shown below of the 1856 map of suburban allotments south of Lake Wendouree. Under the subdivision pattern are details of the 19th century landscape; stiff clay soils giving way to fairer soils to the south and timbered with gum, lightwood and honeysuckle. ‘Generally swampy areas’ are denoted and together with the topographic information a picture of traditional country begins to emerge as well as the subsequent street and residential patterns. The map also locates the survey camp, an old stockyard and the police paddock around the shores of ‘Wendouree or Yuille’s Swamp’.

Figure 3.1: Suburban Allotments (west of) Ballarat County of Grenville 1856 (extract)


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We have also selected two historic maps and overlain them on a map showing the present day layout of Ballarat. By combining maps, we can see patterns emerge. When this series of historical maps was drawn, Ballarat was a relatively new town. Gold mining was a significant activity. Each map was designed to reveal a particular aspect of Ballarat.

In Stage 2, the potential to present and combine historical and contemporary maps through digital overlays will be explored through collaboration with the University of Ballarat.

Geology The rapid development of Ballarat following the discovery of gold in 1851 is charted by these early maps and reveal how the topography, the underlying geology and the distribution of deep gold leads and reefs affected the physical layout of the early township and its subsequent development. An early Geology Map dated 1858 shown below illustrates in simple terms the underlying geology of the area.

The western side of Ballarat is located on an elevated basalt plain, which provided both visual dominance over the surrounding landscape and was difficult to penetrate during the early gold mining period of the City. Consequently, this was the area chosen to be formally laid on a grid pattern, set out with wide boulevards and regularly arranged streets. In contrast, the gold drift area in the eastern part of Ballarat was lower, undulating and easily mined. The large number of working mines in this area in the nineteenth and twentieth century has influenced the irregular road alignment, subdivision pattern and lot sizes with roads and reserves arranged around mine shafts, poppet heads, mullock heaps and other mining infrastructure.

Figure 3.2: Geology map 1858 (COB, 1858_013_01_L)


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Early Ballarat Township The split nature of this development is encapsulated in the 1858 Township Map, based on Urquart’s original survey of 1852 for the centre of Ballarat. The maps below combine the 1858 Township map with the present day cadastral and show the urban development of Ballarat from 1858 to the present day. The 1858 map clearly shows the regular early grid pattern laid out to the west, and to the east, the beginnings of Main Road, an irregularly aligned road through the main Ballarat diggings. The irregular layout and pattern of development in Ballarat East continued to respond to the mining landscape of this area throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century, as is shown in the combined map.

Figures 3.3: Plans of the township of Ballarat in 1858. The bottom map is overlaid with a present day cadastral map (details in red) (COB, 1858_002_S).


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Gold mining landscape The influence of landform on the development of Ballarat and in particular the location of the gold reefs and deep leads can also be seen in the early mining maps of the area. The extract from the large and detailed map of the Ballarat Mining District dated 1859 shows the individual reefs in each mining division as well as a reasonably accurate depiction of the topography and creek network. It is also a great example of the mapmaker’s art.

Figure 3.4: Ballarat Mining District 1859 (this extract approximately equates to the present municipal boundary)


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The following two maps show a progression from the early days of gold mining as recorded in 1859 and the rapid development shown on Ross’s Map of Ballarat and Sebastopol (1868) nine years later. The 1868 map is overlain on the present day cadastral map to show the subsequent expansion of Ballarat.

A number of features are recorded on the enlarged extract of the 1859 Mining District Map below. The name of each reef or lead being worked at that time can be located together with further details of ground conditions which are tabulated on the margins of the complete map. Early place names are also given such as ‘Yuille’s Range’ for the ridge of hills running into Golden Point alongside the Buninyong Road.

The 1868 map that follows has been combined with the present day land subdivision pattern. It shows how additional leads have been mapped and particularly striking are the extensive layouts of Sebastopol, East Ballarat and Soldiers Hill shown on the 1868 map. The map shows how Ballarat’s urban development has followed the gold leads from the city centre outwards and the contrasting form of later residential and industrial development; the irregular patterns of subdivision on the elevated areas and the regular grid on the basalt plains being the obvious example. The intensive gold mining activity running alongside Yarrowee Creek has also been preserved as an undeveloped area of Ballarat. The overlay also shows other features such as the Western Freeway taking advantage of Sawpit Gully through the former goldfield area of Little Bendigo.

Figure 3.5: Extract from the Ballarat Mining District Map of 1859 showing the area detailed on the 1868 map


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Figure 3.6: John L. Ross Map of Ballarat and Sebastopol (showing gold leads) 1868 with the present day land subdivision pattern (COB, 1868_011_L)


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A number of detailed plans for various parts of the early municipal area of Ballarat are also instructive in showing the circumstances that helped shape the city. An example is the plan for Eureka Street, East Ballarat dated 1867. Sixteen years on from the discovery of gold the plan shows the attempt to impose some order on the chaotic layout of early buildings that peppered the fast evolving landscape, particularly the area behind the relatively organised Main Street. This history also accounts for the kinks in Eureka Street, one its many enduring features.

Figure 3.7: The changing nature of Eureka Street 1867 (PROV VPRS 4771)

Rural townships As well as detailing the development of the urban area of Ballarat, there are a number of plans for the other townships in the municipal area. The 1859 township plan for Learmonth shown below denotes the dominance of the hill and its inclusion within the town and the desire for a public park along the lake shore. Land for a railway reserve and a site for a railway station are also depicted and interestingly, the term village has been pencilled out and replaced with town.

Figure 3.8: Learmonth Township 1859 (PROV VPRS 6420)


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Finally, an early township plan for Buninyong is instructive in revealing the underlying landscape and early settler contact with the area as well as the aspirations for the planned settlement. The allotments within the strong grid pattern record a dispersal of public spaces for civic buildings, various church denominations and a botanical garden denoted in blue. The surveyor’s new vision overlies a network of informal tracks, some possibly following Aboriginal routes, and the occasional hut as well as local variations in topography and drainage including reference to springs. There are notes on soils and tree cover denoting areas of gum and lightwood as well as oak, cherry tree and wattle. It would be fascinating to compare these features with present day Buninyong.

Figure 3.9: Buninyong Township 1856 (PROV VPRS 6420)


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3.3.2 Looking at Ballarat in its regional setting Section 3.2 and Appendix 2 look at Ballarat through a framework of national and Victorian themes, revealing things about Ballarat that are true of many places as well as identifying some aspects that are distinctively Ballarat. Section 3.3.1 presented ways that Ballarat has been depicted in the past.

In this section, we place Ballarat in its regional setting, and then in the next section look in more detail at the municipality. The maps offer just a few of the many ways that we can look at the landscape of today.

These perspectives on the landscape are based on a technical analysis – processes of examining different aspects of the landscape - usually for a particular purpose. In Stage 2 multiple perspectives will be sought, drawing on the knowledge and experience of the landscape present within the many communities of Ballarat, the two Aboriginal traditional owner groups and the perspectives of the wider communities and interests that value Ballarat’s historic urban landscape. This should become on ongoing process, recognising that the knowledge, stories and values expressed by communities will change over time.

Understanding the distinctiveness of the City of Ballarat starts with an understanding of Aboriginal traditional country, the underlying geology and the living landscapes across the region.

Traditional country The municipality of the City of Ballarat extends across parts of the traditional country of Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung. Placing the ‘footprint’ of the City of Ballarat over traditional country reveals the differences in scale of traditional country, compared to today’s municipalities which are far smaller and more densely settled.

Figure 3.10: Wadawurrung (Wathaurung Aboriginal Corporation) and Dj Dja Wurrung RAP areas.

Under the Aboriginal Heritage Act, Aboriginal people with traditional connections to country can seek to become a Registered Aboriginal Party and exercise cultural heritage responsibilities for that area. The shared boundary between the two RAPs runs across the northern section of Ballarat, between Waubra and Sulky. The traditional country of the Dja Dja Wurrung occupies the northern part of the municipality and the Wadawurrung a larger part of the area to the south.

This map is a legal map. It was not drawn by Aboriginal people about their own country. In Stage 2 of this project, the City of Ballarat plans to work with both traditional owner groups to bring their particular ways of seeing and knowing their country into clear focus.


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Underlying geology

Figure 3.11

The City of Ballarat sits over a landscape shaped by volcanic activity. The regional map shows the vast sweep of the Newer Volcanics that have created a region of volcanic cones and lava flows stretching from Melbourne to the South Australian border. The influence of the volcanic activity on the landscape of the municipality can be seen in the historical maps too. Today technology helps us see inside the land and to interpret what lies beneath; in the past it was the observation skills of Aboriginal and later settler peoples that enabled them to find and exploit much need geological resources – fine stone for tools, gold for wealth and more.


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Living landscapes The municipality of the City of Ballarat falls into two of Victoria’s twenty eight bioregions: the Victorian Volcanic Plains and the Central Victorian Uplands. Bioregions are an important regional-scale biodiversity planning tool and are used in Victoria’s Biodiversity Strategy and the Commonwealth government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. Bioregions establish a framework of environments across Victoria, each having its own distinctive characteristics. The bioregions reflect natural boundaries created by the underlying geology, landforms and water catchments.

Figure 3.12: Victorian Bioregions, indicating the general area of the City of Ballarat

Central Victorian Uplands bioregion is dominated by Lower Paleozoic deposits giving rise to dissected uplands at higher elevations. Low lying corridors of valleys and plains are dominated by Plains Grassy Woodland and Valley Grassy Forest ecosystems on the fertile plains and Grassy Woodland and Floodplain Riparian Woodland ecosystems on the river courses and Herb-rich Foothill Forest and Shrubby Foothill Forest ecosystems on the more fertile slopes with outwash. Amongst granitic and sedimentary (with Tertiary colluvial aprons) terrain with metamorphic and old volcanic rocks which have formed steeply sloped peaks and ridges.

These less fertile hills support Grassy Dry Forest and Heathy Dry Forest ecosystems on the less fertile hills. Cainozoic deposits from the newer volcanic flows have infilled some of the old long valley floors. Relatively poor soils occur on the non-volcanic material are dominated by yellow texture contrast soils (Chromosols and Kurosols) and a mixture texture contrast soils (Chromosols) and red friable earths (Ferrosols) on the volcanic terrain.

Victorian Volcanic Plain bioregion is dominated by Cainozoic volcanic deposits. These formed an extensive flat to undulating basaltic plain with stony rises, old lava flows, numerous volcanic cones and old eruption points and is dotted with shallow lakes both salt and freshwater.

The soils are variable ranging from red texture contrast soils (Kurosols and Ferosols) on the higher fertile plain and scoraceous material supports Plains Grassy Woodland, Plains Grassland/Plains Grassy Woodland Mosaic and Plains Grassland. Calcareous sodic texture contrast soils grading to yellow acidic earths (Calcarosols, Sodosols and Dermosols), on the intermediate plain, and grey cracking clays (Vertosols) on the low plains, supports Stony Knoll Shrubland/Plains Grassy Woodland/Plains Grassy Wetland Mosaic and Plains Grassy Wetland ecosystems. On the stony rises (volcanic outcropping) the stony earths (Dermosols) support Stoney Rises Herb-rich Woodland, Basalt Shrubby Woodland and Herb-rich Foothill Forest ecosystems.


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Tree covered landscapes

Figure 3.13

The landscape has been significantly changed over the years since Europeans started to occupy Aboriginal country. Public land areas provide the majority of places in which the pre-European landscape can be appreciated. It is quite difficult to convey the extent of this change in a single map.

One way is to look at the change in the extent of natural vegetation across the municipality and the region. At the regional scale, Ballarat retains a number of fragmented areas of natural forest cover but locally, these become quite significant aspects of landscape character.

The public land areas that are not tree covered are primarily lakes and wetlands, and these form a distinctive pattern across the region and are very important elements in the landscape of Ballarat.


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Finding gold

Figure 3.14

Deep leads, shown on the historical maps in the previous section, are gold bearing. Finding and mapping the deep leads was an important task for geologists and mining surveyors, and this continues today.

This map shows where these deep lead gold bearing formations are located in the central Victorian landscape.


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Aboriginal heritage

Figure 3.15

Aboriginal people lived in this landscape for millennia. Nowhere was unoccupied. Today, areas of ‘cultural heritage sensitivity’ are defined to help define the places where evidence of Aboriginal activity is most likely to be found: for example along water courses, around lakes and wetlands, and close to outcrops of stone suitable for tool making. Figure 3.15 shows this at a regional scale.

More recently, attention is being given to recording places associated with creation ancestors and dreaming stories. Over time the map of Aboriginal cultural sensitivity will be progressively enriched with input from traditional owners and further research and documentation.


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Links

Figure 3.16

Travel paths across this landscape are both ancient and modern. Aboriginal pathways would have criss-crossed the landscape, connecting people to resources and enabling larger gatherings. Early Europeans used these pathways through the landscape, as well as making new routes and introducing new transport modes such as horses and railways.

Today, Ballarat is linked to other cities and towns by a network of roads, rail and airports, and of course by telecommunications and the internet. This map illustrates these links.


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3.3.3 Looking at the City of Ballarat Boundaries Boundaries shape our ways of seeing and relating to place and to other people. Boundaries are often closely connected to a sense of our community or shared identity.

Asking questions such as: where is your neighbourhood, or what do you think of as ‘Ballarat’? would help explore boundaries associated with identity and community. This could be done in Stage 2.

Figure 3.17 shows a series of types of boundaries.

First is the traditional country of Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung. The boundary today is formalised through Victorian legislative processes; in the past it would have been established through Aboriginal law. Boundaries and protocols for crossing boundaries would have been known to all, and it is likely that there were areas of shared country too.

The second layer shows the finest divisions; this is the layer of property boundaries resulting from the survey, subdivision and sale of land that commenced with European occupation. The map shows the larger allotment sizes across the rural landscape and the density in each of the major towns. Comparison of the historical maps with current property boundaries (e.g. Figure 3.3) demonstrates this process of intensification.

The third layer is that of local government administration and governance. The current City of Ballarat has ben formed from earlier local government entities: initially these were Roads Boards and then Shires, Towns and Boroughs. The urban core of Ballarat was, until the 1920s, divided into the Town of Ballarat and the Town of East Ballarat. Some of East Ballarat’s civic buildings remain, and are an important marker of local identity. Similarly, each shire shown on the map was once a distinct administrative entity, often reflecting a strong local culture and identity; as a result attempts to amalgamate these disparate shires were often strongly resisted, as was the splitting of a Shire.


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Figure 3.17: Boundaries


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The shape of the land While the geology shows the underlying rocks, the shape of the surface of the land is more familiar.

The topography of the area provides a unique setting to the City of Ballarat. A landscape of volcanic and ancient alluvial plains, interspersed with dormant volcanic cones, elevated ridgelines, rolling hills and ancient granite outcrops.

The topography of the landscape provides important intimate and distant views, and a setting to the urban core and several of the satellite townships, such as Buninyong, Waubra and Learmonth.

The highpoints are landmarks and look-outs, for us today and for people in the past. Valleys sheltered from prevailing winds make good places to camp and settle.

Waterways dissect the landscape: many are ephemeral, flowing only briefly in the rainiest times. But some of the larger creeks, rivers and swamps offered good water all year round.

The geometric pattern of property boundaries cuts across the flowing lines that indicate the shape of the land.

The land survey and subdivision overlay illustrates how the urban core of Ballarat has been aligned to the views towards Mount Warrenheip. In other places it indicates a lack of responsiveness to the natural landforms.


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Figure 3.18: The shape of the land


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Using the land Settlement has always been dependent on water available from swamps and creeks. This plan shows the historical relationship between water sources and colonial and later urban and rural settlement and consolidation. Aboriginal settlement patterns would also demonstrate a close relationship to a wide range of water resources, hence the use of waterways as an indicator of areas of cultural sensitivity (Figure 3.19).

Rural settlement and subdivision patterns are more intensive in areas of reliable water supply, particularly where water courses intersected the rich volcanic plain. Townships were located at Coglhan’s Creek, Lakes Burrumbeet and Learmonth and other main water sources, such as the ‘Round water holes’ near Buninyong from the mid nineteenth century. Ballarat’s urban core is located at the junctions of the substantial Yarrowee and Canadian Creeks, with Lake Wendouree (formerly Yuille’s Swamp) nearby. The substantial number of man made water bodies and modified water courses north and east of the urban core tell the story of Ballarat’s early and continuing struggle to supply an adequate potable water supply to a large and growing population from the 1850s onwards.

Water is not the only factor in the pattern of land uses now evident across the City of Ballarat. The location of townships was determined by land surveyors based on resources and travel routes, and they laid out the pattern of streets, allocated areas for public buildings and reserves, defined commercial and residential areas. Today, town planning undertakes these tasks, allowing for growth and change.


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Figure 3.19: Using the land


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The public estate The public estate represents an aspect of our shared inheritance. It includes the land and the lakes that, for a variety of reasons, have been set aside from private sale. Often these areas were set aside as ‘commons’ to enable resources such as timber, or water to be available to everyone.

The main Crown Land within the municipality follows the forested ridge from Creswick Forest in the north east, around the eastern side of the city and through Canadian to the Mount Buninyong State Forest.

Crown Land reserves have protected and enhanced the setting of the urban core through the retention of the forested ridge to the east of the municipality. Public Reserves are principally associated with beautification of natural features such as water courses, water bodies or disused mine sites which are unsuitable for other uses.

There is a concentration of reserves following the Yarrowee Creek from the White Swan reservoir to the urban core and down through Sebastopol to Bonshaw; along Canadian Creek and Main Road through Ballarat East, Mount Clear and through to Buninyong following the deep leads.


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Figure 3.20: The public estate


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Place names and identities The City of Ballarat is many localities and communities. There are around 43 named localities outside the main Ballarat city, and another 18 within in city and sharing the 3350 postcode.

The designation and naming of so many localities reflects its history. Buninyong for example, was the first inland town proclaimed in Victoria, preceding Ballarat. Within the city itself the distinctive spatial patterning of Ballarat East and Ballarat West reflects their origins, and a continuing sense of community identity remains today. Each was once a separate municipality

Some of the place naming tells of the past – the naming of areas after the mines and mining camps for example resonates in locality names such as Golden Point and Canadian.

Naming is an important marker of identity. The process of naming is about taking possession: some Indigenous language naming remains while other names have been lost or replaced. Places can have nicknames as well as formally gazetted names too: ‘pleurisy plains’ for example.

The list of locality names – shown on Figure 3.21 - is remarkable for its length:

Addington, Alfredton, Ascot, Bakery Hill, Bald Hills (part), Ballarat Central, Ballarat East, Ballarat North, Black Hill, Blowhard, Bo Peep (part), Bonshaw, Brown Hill, Buninyong (part), Bunkers Hill, Burrumbeet (part), Canadian, Cardigan, Cardigan Village, Chapel Flat, Coghills Creek, Creswick (part), Delacombe, Durham Lead (part), Ercildoune (part), Eureka, Glen Park (part), Glendaurel, Glendonald, Golden Point, Gong Gong, Invermay (part), Invermay Park, Lake Gardens, Lake Wendouree, Learmonth, Lucas, Magpie, Miners Rest, Mitchell Park, Mount Bolton, Mount Clear, Mount Helen, Mount Pleasant, Mount Rowan, Nerrina, Newington, Redan, Scotchmans Lead, Scotsburn (part), Sebastopol, Smythes Creek (part), Soldiers Hill, Sulky (part), Tourello, Warrenheip (part), Wattle Flat (part), Waubra (part), Weatherboard, Wendouree and Windermere.


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Figure 3.21: Place names and identities


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Valuing Ballarat’s story Since 1978 a number of heritage studies have been commissioned by the City of Ballarat and the adjoining shires. These studies have sought to identify places – buildings, sites, precincts, trees, parks and gardens and other features – that are of cultural significance to each municipality. Some will be of importance to the whole of Victoria and have been added to the Victorian Heritage Register, while others may be of national importance.

This map shows the distribution of the main heritage precincts within the urban centre of Ballarat which have resulted from these studies. These precincts are recognised and protected in the Ballarat Planning Scheme. In addition there are other smaller heritage precincts and individual heritage places too small to show on this map that are also recognised and protected. In Stage 2 the recognised values and themes of each precinct will be further interrogated.

The map also shows four sites of geological significance: two are waterbodies and two are volcanic cones.

Not shown are the Aboriginal heritage places that have been recorded through pre-development surveys; this information is generally confidential to ensure that these places are not placed at risk.

Another layer to be added in the future, are the places of importance to Aboriginal people today: some may reflect traditions and ancestral, others the evidence of past generations, and others more recent connections and aspects of history.


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Figure 3.22: Valuing Ballarat’s story


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3.4 Seeing through community eyes

3.4.1 Background Ballarat is a city of communities, home to many diverse peoples, each contributing their own culture to create today’s palimpsest.

The municipality extends across parts of the traditional country of the Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples who have lived here for countless millennia and remained connected to these landscapes today. Their ancestors shaped the landscape through their activities, knowing it deeply and imbuing it with important cultural and spiritual meanings.

The landscape is dotted with Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung places – spots where people lived and live today, areas for hunting, fishing and harvesting, places that witnessed large gatherings, birthing trees, spiritual and ceremonial locations. Through their cultural practices, stories, and traditions knowledge was built and shared, generation by generation. They witnessed significant landscape changes too - Displacement and loss is also part of the story for Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung, and the landscape once named by them has now been overlain with other names, the much of their traditional country is now land controlled by others.

The occupation of country by settler peoples brought significant change. The landscape today is dotted with the farms, small settlements, and towns that reflect these settler cultures, primarily those from the UK (English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish), America, continental Europe (Italians) and China. But many of the best places to dwell and the easiest routes to travel reflect both Aboriginal and settler peoples.

Occupation of traditional lands of Aboriginal people started with graziers bringing in their stock and finding good pasture, water and home sites. Quickly the discovery of gold attracted other people from near and far, creating mining camps and reshaping the parts of the landscape and then mining deep. Out of the mines emerged the wealth of Ballarat, expressed in many of its fine public buildings, and still represented in place names, localities and a strong sense of community identity. Within Ballarat for example, local communities still retain and value their distinctiveness: this is explored below. As well ‘an extraordinary number of people across Australia are said to be able to trace their lineage to the early gold rush pioneers of Ballarat’ (City of Ballarat 2013: 8).

Ballarat’s role as a regional centre started with gold but continued to be important well beyond the gold years, with the arrival of the railway in 1862 connecting it to the port at Geelong and radial lines to other towns. Its regional centre role is reflected in the number of institutions and schools that developed in Ballarat, and in a number of industries, making it the centrepoint of a wider landscape of community connections for over a century.

As the city expanded in the post-war years, new suburbs came into being: Ballarat North and Wendouree, and likewise population growth since the mid-1990s has been concentrated in the inner north suburbs of Alfredton and Invermay Park, and areas south of the City Centre such as Delacombe. More recently, growth has also been in Lake Gardens, Miners Rest and Sebastopol (<http://profile.id.com.au/ballarat/about> accessed 23.07.2013).

Ballarat today is a city with a legacy gifted by many people. One aspect is independence, another is continuing connection. Heritage is an important expression of both, and its many meanings to Ballarat people – distilled from Ballarat Imagine – are discussed below.

3.4.2 Distinctive identities Within the municipality are many smaller rural settlements and townships, each with their own particular identity, often formed over many generations and linked closely to people and families, local history and stories and to the landscape.

Each of the localities within Ballarat is likely to have characteristics that make it distinctive. These can be explored further in Stage 2 of this project.


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Profiling of the communities of Ballarat demonstrates a strong level of community connectedness measured by considering three types of networks: personal networks of family and friends, broader bridging connections massed through clubs, schools and workplaces and governance networks that link communities with decision-making institutions. In Ballarat, people participate in the community through community events, being members of organised groups and through taking action as part of a group, including being a volunteer. The level of involvement is higher than the state-wide average and just below the average for regional Victoria. Ballarat people have strong personal networks and generally feel that they are part of the community (City of Ballarat 2013: 18). Ballarat people also actively engage in arts and cultural activities, and in sports and recreation. Such involvements both reflect and reinforce an engaged and engaging community (City of Ballarat 2013: 39. Democratic engagement is another process that builds community connections: a VicHealth survey showed that slightly more than half of the Ballarat people surveyed had participated in a ‘citizen engagement’ activity in the last 12 months (for example, attending a public meeting, written to or spoken with a local politician, joined a protest or signed a petition). This level of participation was similar to the state average (City of Ballarat 2013: 41)

Ballarat is a changing community and while it is more culturally diverse today than in the past, only 8% of the Ballarat community was born overseas, compared to around 24% for Victoria as a whole and an average of 10.6% across regional Victoria. Acceptance of cultural diversity amongst the Ballarat community appears to be on a par with Victoria as a whole, and more than 60% of the community agreed or strongly agreed that Ballarat is a multicultural place (City of Ballarat 2009: 17). Another survey indicated that Ballarat is more accepting than many other regions cities such as Bendigo, Geelong, Shepparton, Latrobe and Mildura (City of Ballarat 2013: 38)

The number of people identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in the census figures for Ballarat has increased from 852 in 2006 to 1139 in 2011, with a sizeable proportion in the under 20 age groups compared to the non-Indigenous community (City of Ballarat 2013: 39).

Ballarat Imagine (detailed below) demonstrates that people from across the municipality feel strongly connected to the heritage of place and community.


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3.4.3 Ballarat Imagine Ballarat Imagine is the name of the community engagement process developed to bring community values and vision into the Ballarat Strategy. Ballarat Imagine asked people across the many communities of the municipality to share:

What they love about Ballarat

What they imagine for Ballarat

What they want to retain in Ballarat

There has been a strong response to the Ballarat Imagine process with around 6500 responses received in a variety of forms over a three month period. The results are reflected in the Indicative Characterisation in Chapter 4, and further processes to engage local and outside communities will form part of Stage 2.

More than 5000 of the responses to two of the questions in Ballarat Imagine were analysed for this project: what people love about Ballarat and what they want to retain in Ballarat.

The aim of the analysis was to reveal specific places and types of places or features that are valued by those who responded, and to examine the qualities or characteristics revealed as being important. This analysis was undertaken by Maxine Vallance for the City of Ballarat, and the results and raw data provided to the project team. The commentary below combines the analysis by Ms Vallance and that of the project team.

There are strong similarities in the responses across the two questions – love and retain. Generally what the community identified as being ‘loved’ they also want to ‘retain’ with due care, planning and maintenance. Responses to ‘retain’ included many more specific places as well as a sharper emphasis on some qualities evident in the urban environment that are seen to be at risk.

The Ballarat community expressed a strong sense of pride in and respect for the historical value of its places, buildings and architecture. Many specific places were identified: the most frequently mentioned ‘loved’ places were Lake Wendouree, Sturt Street and Victoria Street, followed by a range of other places such as Black Hill, Eureka Stadium, Kryal Castle, Lake Esmond, Lydiard Street, Parent Place, Regent Multiplex cinemas, Sovereign Hill, Ten Pin Bowling Centre, University of Ballarat, Wildlife Park, Yarrawee Trail. This is an interesting list and reflects the range of personal connections and interests across the respondents. Not all would be formally classed as heritage.

And what is ‘heritage’ for Ballarat people? Places identified as being part of Ballarat’s heritage, history or as landmarks included built structures such as the Arch of Victory and the associated Avenue of Honour, Civic Hall, Mechanics Institute, Town Hall, Post Office, Glass Conservatory (Botanical Gardens), the Museum of Australian Democracy. Lake Wendouree was probably the most strongly recognised place of all.

Some loved heritage streets included: Dana Street, Deakin Place, Drummond Street, Lydiard Street, Main Road, Mair Street, McArthur Street, Sturt Street, Victoria Street, View Point and Wendouree Parade. Valued street qualities in Ballarat include the wide streets, tree-lined streets, bluestone guttering, cobbled laneways, and gravelled shoulder road edges.

A far longer list of places were identified in response to the retain question, indicating that there are places that the community may fear will be lost: examples include the ball bearings factory, the biscuit factory, pipeworks, Sunnyside mill, city entrance landscapes, Lydiard Street railway gates and civic hall (amongst others).

Places with active community connections identified included the library, the Aboriginal Centre, several of the schools and the University of Ballarat. There is a strong sense of community in Ballarat: it is seen as diverse, multicultural, inclusive and involved. And family connections to the Ballarat story are part of a sense of local history and culture. Other places were valued as offering an arts and culture activity focus: for example the Art Gallery and Her


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Majesty's Theatre. Ballarat Symphony Orchestra represents an aspect of creative expression and it is likely there are many other similar examples important to the community.

Loved ‘events’ included the Begonia Festival, Ballarat Beer Festival, Harmony Festival, Heritage Festival, the Royal South Street Competitions and both the Lakeside and Farmers markets amongst others: some of these are long-standing and distinctively Ballarat. Other events that people want to retain indicate a close relationship between a cultural activity and a loved place: for example the ‘music summers’ at Lake Wendouree.

Eureka – the site and Museum, the story and the flag - were all identified as valued and to be retained. Together these examples offer a powerful illustration of the many different ways that a sense of identity is expressed – in place, story, objects and community.

Ballarat is a city ‘in the landscape’. Valued landscape elements include Lake Wendouree, Mt Buninyong, views of Mt Warrenheip, Canadian Forest and the countryside that surrounds the city. Ballarat has a country feel and ambiance. And within the city, parks, gardens, street trees help create a beautiful city, bring nature into its heart. Open spaces are also valued places for recreation and leisure, and for community events. The creek systems and trails and the nearby bush are important. Even the weather, which often attracts adverse comment from outsiders, is valued.

What makes Ballarat’s built heritage distinctive? It is the patina of age – the sense of oldness, the quality of architecture, design and presentation, and the diversity of ‘houses from 1870s to the 1930s’. It is the grand – the ‘magnificent’ – and it is the simple – the workers cottages and laneways. Moreover, Ballarat has a ‘heritage vibe’ – heritage is important and everywhere. The community has a strong sense of its history and heritage, linked to local culture.

Maintaining the city's history and ‘heritage vibe’ is closely associated with the built and urban environment, the wider landscape and rural setting, and the community life and sense of identity. Landmarks distinguish localities within the wider urban landscape. The urban diversity created by older buildings mixed with the new is enjoyed.

For the people of Ballarat, their sense of uniqueness as a city and a community is clearly evident, and the wealth of heritage that is part of the city’s identity sets it apart from other regional centres in this community’s eyes. Heritage in Ballarat is ‘our’ heritage, and the words ‘heritage and pride are often used together when referring to historical features, landmarks and ‘community feel’.

The fear of loss is also present. Alterations to the look and feel of parts of Ballarat’s urban landscape that has resulted from the demolition of older houses with period features, removal of the trams, and the impacts of some new developments were noted. As a result, considered and careful planning combined with an understanding of and respect for what make Ballarat unique is sought.


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Looking at Ballarat East through local eyes: a case study

Ballarat East, once a separate municipality retains a distinctive character, created through a combination of its history, environment and people. The people of Ballarat East have a strong sense of connection to this area, and a love for and understanding of its landscape. Together residents have formed the Ballarat East Network (BE Net) to help the people of Ballarat East shape their loved local area by supporting sustainable, good design that reflects the character of their neighbourhood.

To explore one way of engaging with a local community, we spend a few hours with two Ballarat East locals: Erin McCuskey and Diane Chester.

In showing us around their neighbourhood, we talked about:

boundaries: what are the boundaries of Ballarat East?

place names: are there local names for particular places, and what is the story behind these names? Are these names still well known or being lost?

special places: what are the special places in Ballarat East? Places that locals like to go to and the places they take visitors to?

qualities: what is it that makes Ballarat East distinctive?

As they showed us around their neighbourhood, a strong sense of history emerged, with stories told about how the landscape was reshaped in the gold rushes, and about particular streets and buildings, highlighting how being in the physical landscape evokes feelings about what is valued. The higgledy piggledy nature of the remnant alluvial mining landscape and streetscapes, the variety of housing styles and roof forms are all a part of the valued character.

Winding roads through a hilly landscape provide glimpses of the historic city centre, across a neighbourhood or into the forest. The rural feel of this inner-city area is very important: the unsealed road shoulders and grassy verges, the inter-connected trails and parks, the forested ridge, and the relatively low level of light pollution meaning that stars can be clearly seen at night.

Quirky elements such as the Tammy Fence – a hand-crafted front fence in Eureka Street with the notes from the song “Tammy” – through to the popularity of sheds – all these make up what is Ballarat East today.

Our short tour illustrated the value of getting out and looking: a chance to start seeing through the eyes of people who know a place well.


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4 INDICATIVE CHARACTERISATION FRAMEWORK

4.1 Introduction The aim of the indicative characterisation framework is to describe in broad terms the landscape of the municipality as seen today and particularly those features and qualities that make certain areas distinct from each other.

This section introduces the methodology that underpins our approach to characterising the Ballarat landscape. It considers previous broad-scale landscape assessment work and offers an initial overview of the visual character of the City of Ballarat area. Broad character areas are presented at two scales: 12 character areas across the whole municipality and 13 smaller character areas within the urban core of Ballarat.

This work has been carried out specifically to deliver an indicative characterisation framework for the Ballarat Strategy and with the view that the results could be tested at Stage 2 alongside the values of the wider community.

4.2 Methodology

4.2.1 Landscape Character Assessment The Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) methodology was developed in the UK over a number of years culminating in the production of national guidelines in 2002 (The Countryside Agency 2002). This Indicative Character Framework is based on aspects of the Landscape Character Assessment methodology which was considered a useful first step in helping to formulate our approach.

In this methodology there are two main stages to landscape character assessment:

1. To draw up a relatively value-free and objective characterisation of the landscape

2. To make judgements about that landscape character to inform decision making.

Characterisation is the first stage and embraces the practical steps involved in identifying areas of distinctive character, classifying and mapping them and describing their character. It concentrates on making clear what makes one area different from another. The four main steps of characterisation include:

1. Defining the scope (in this case ‘indicative’)

2. Undertaking a desk study

3. Carrying out field survey

4. Classifying and describing.

The end product of characterisation is a map of landscape types and/or areas, together with relatively value-free descriptions of their character and identification of the key features and elements which are most important in creating this character.

The second stage of making judgements did not form part of our approach.

4.2.2 Our approach Our approach was based on initial desk study and extensive field survey adapting the UK field record sheet to take account of appropriate descriptors for landscape features and elements relevant to the Victorian landscape and address the complexities of the urban as well as the rural landscape. Our approach was team-based, allowing discussion and debate as part of the analytical process prior to reaching a consensus on potential character areas.


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An initial study of background documents and various map layers – topography, water and drainage, land cover, subdivision patterns and historic maps – led to initial ideas on where to test potential areas of different character. A field sheet was adapted to help record the landscape. Essentially it consisted of a table of descriptors designed to provide a consistent approach to field assessment.

The field record sheet (Appendix 1) included a number of headings as follows:

topography

dominant landcover organised under sub headings: hydrology, forest/trees, land use, farming, communications, subdivision patterns, heritage features, other landcover

building categories and types (widened to account for urban core areas) grouped into public/civic, commercial, industrial, residential, and open space

settlement form, style, materials and architectural periods

streetscape elements

visual assessment: descriptor terms for scale, texture, colour complexity, unity, form, enclosure, visual dynamic, and views (see table below).

Figure 4.1: Visual assessment descriptors

Scale Intimate Small Medium Large

Texture Smooth Textured Rough Very rough

Colour Monochrome Muted Colourful Garish

Complexity Uniform Simple Diverse Complex

Unity Unified Interrupted Fragmented Chaotic

Form Straight Angular Curved Sinuous

Enclosure Expansive Open Enclosed Constrained

Visual dynamic Sweeping Spreading Dispersed Channelled

Views Panoramic Framed Axial Internal

A draft indicative map was then drawn up for discussion between team members and City of Ballarat officers. Following further refinements two indicative character maps were drawn up. One at the municipal scale which identified 12 character areas including the urban core of Ballarat and a second at the urban core scale which identified a further 13 character areas. A description of the key characteristics and features of all these areas are presented in section 4.3.

It should be emphasised that this indicative character framework does not include any stakeholder or community input and represents the objective analysis of the consultant team.

4.2.3 Summary In summary, the approach taken was designed to deliver:

1. An Indicative Characterisation Framework to help inform the ongoing preparation of the Ballarat Strategy.

2. A visually based characterisation of the Ballarat landscape from an ‘outsiders’ perspective describing both its rural areas and its urban core.

3. An initial assessment that could be tested in Stage 2 examining the different ways of seeing evident in an ‘outsider’s’ analysis and the ‘insider’ views of the communities of Ballarat, recognising the plurality and diversity of community interests, local residents and community groups, agencies, individuals who manage the land, businesses and visitors to Ballarat.


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4.3 Setting the scene

4.3.1 The south- west Victorian landscape Before carrying out the field assessment and as part of the initial desk study a number of previous studies were consulted including the former Land Conservation Council Victoria report on Ballarat (LCC 1980) and the more recent South West Landscape Assessment Study (Planisphere 2013). This latter study, undertaken for the Department of Planning and Community Development, has defined landscape character types and areas for the whole south west region of Victoria. The study classified two broad Landscape Character Types that occur within the City of Ballarat: the Western Volcanic Plain and the Uplands. The division between the two forms a north-south boundary running approximately through the centre of the city area where the extensive basalt plain of West Ballarat meets the sedimentary rocks of East Ballarat. Each is described briefly below.

Western Volcanic Plain The Western Volcanic Plain sweeps across the greater part of the north and western areas of the municipality and has been divided into a number of smaller Landscape Character Areas including:

Volcanic Ranges: including the Sister Hills in the far north west corner of the municipality.

Cones and Mines: a large area to the north and east of Learmonth and the Sunraysia Highway stretching towards Clunes and Smeaton.

Volcanic Agricultural: an equally large area stretching from the centre of the city westwards to Lake Burrumbeet and beyond.

Vegetated Volcanic Plain: largely outside of the city boundary but including the western slopes of Mount Warrenheip.

Uplands The Uplands include a large area of the Great Dividing Range and covers the south and east part of the municipality running up from Buninyong to Creswick. This Landscape Character Type also includes two smaller areas within the municipality: the elevated area of Mount Bolton in the north and the raised forest area of Haddon Common on the southern boundary. Four separate Landscape Character Areas are identified.

Island Uplands: the granitic outcrop of Mount Bolton forming a significant landscape feature along with the neighbouring granite outcrops of Mount Beckworth and Mount Misery.

Residential Forested Edges: including the western fringes of Creswick which just stretch over the municipal boundary.

Creswick Forested Edges: includes the large area of elevated forest that characterises the rural area of North Ballarat.

Rural Living: covering the majority of the eastern parts of Ballarat from Brown Hill in the north to Buninyong in the south and including the smaller area of Haddon Common.

This study has also identified Mount Buninyong and Mount Warrenheip as a significant regional landscape, noting that they are important landscape features, being ‘distinctive steep sided volcanic cones, both retaining a natural woodland cover’. It notes that they create ‘iconic gateways to Ballarat’ and are valued for their aesthetic, historic, environmental and social significance (Planisphere 2013:132-135).

The study was a useful starting point providing a broad overview from which to begin an analysis of the complexities of Ballarat’s rural and urban landscape.


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4.3.2 The visual landscape of Ballarat Our initial visual analysis (below) indicated that the landscape could be analysed at two scales. Firstly at the broader municipal scale situating the urban city in its wider landscape setting and secondly at a smaller scale within the city environs itself and this has informed the approach taken for the Indicative Character Framework presented in the following section.

This initial visual analysis will need to be analysed further in Stage 2 particularly within the central areas of the urban core, where complex skyline silhouettes and street vistas are significant.

Regional The City of Ballarat enjoys a varied landscape with the open pasture of the volcanic plains and cones of the north and west contrasting with the forested hills and ridges, part of the Great Dividing Range, that form the eastern half of the municipality.

At a regional scale and from a visual perspective many of the prominent landmarks that can be seen and enjoyed from the Ballarat area are in fact outside of the municipal boundary. These include the volcanic granitic ranges of Mount Beckworth and Mount Misery and the Mount Buangor ranges beyond, the forested ridges of Enfield State Forest to the south and even Mount Warrenheip which is in the neighbouring Shire of Moorabool.

Municipal Within the municipal area several major landforms form prominent visual features shown on Figure 4.2. These include:

The mountain ranges of Mount Bolton and Mount Beckworth

The Learmonth volcanic hills that lead up to these northern ranges.

In contrast the largely forested ridges of the east and southern parts of the municipality form an elevated green band that encircles the city area.

Panoramic views across the flat open plains to the mountain ranges and volcanic cones are enjoyed from the north and western fringes of the city as well as along the main highways and views east from the urban core to the forested ridge often feature Mount Warrenheip and Mount Buninyong forming an equally impressive panorama.

Urban core Within the urban core (Figure 4.3) a number of significant views become apparent both from the approaches to the city and from the various city landmarks and CBD. These visual qualities are considered as part of the indicative characterisation framework in the next section but in summary they include:

City approaches Illustrated in the photo sequence are the Victoria Street and Sturt Street approaches (Figures 4.4 and 4.5), showing:

As the city is approached from the east through the forested ridge the city appears to be set in a forest setting.

On the Victoria Street approach to Bakery Hill there are significant views of the central city skyline with its key historic buildings.

The approach along Sturt Street framing the view of Mount Warrenheip as a key focal point and landmark.


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Figure 4.2: A visual analysis of the municipal area


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Figure 4.3: A visual analysis of Ballarat’s urban core


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City landmarks

The basalt plateau escarpment that runs through the centre of the city becomes a significant feature both for views over the Yarrowee Creek valley and as a prominent feature in views from the east.

Within the urban core area Black Hill and Sovereign Hill become major visual focal points.

Significant views from Lake Wendouree looking east over the city skyline to the forested ridge and framed by Mount Warrenheip and Mount Buninyong.

City skyline and CBD

Complex silhouettes characterise the city skyline centred on the three iconic towers of the Railway Station, General Post Office and the Town Hall. Other towers such as Craig’s Hotel, various church spires and a number of remaining chimney stacks also contribute to the unique skyline of the city.

Significant axial views along the main street alignments in the centre of Ballarat including direct views of Mount Warrenheip from Sturt, Dana and Mair Street and a major vista along Lydiard Street between the Mining School and Soldiers Hill.

Figure 4. 4: Sequence of views towards Ballarat CBD from the main eastern approach along Ballarat-Burrumbeet Road and Victoria Street

First view of Ballarat within a forested setting on the approach road from the Western Highway.

Avenue tree planting forms a strong feature along Victoria Street.

Fine historic buildings enhance the approach to the city centre.

Approaching the CBD at Bakery Hill.


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Figure 4.5: Sequence of views towards Ballarat CBD along Sturt Street

Sturt Street approach through Alfredton looking towards the eastern forested ridge.

Approaching the Arch of Victory along the Ballarat Avenue of Honour.

The conical shape of Mount Warrenheip terminates the view along Sturt Street.

Approaching the CBD.


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4.4 The Indicative Character Framework

4.4.1 Introduction The aim of the Indicative Character Framework (ICF) is to describe coherent tracts of landscape character for the wider municipality and beyond and areas of urban landscape character within the city itself. It aims to describe the pattern of the landscape as seen today its prominent landscape features (those physical elements in the landscape such as walls and trees) and visual aesthetic qualities.

The character areas are shown in two groups, the whole municipality and then the urban core.

Whole municipality: first there is a map showing the 12 character areas across the whole municipality, followed by a double-page spread for each character area. The character areas are:

4. Mount Bolton Range

5. Creswick Creek Plains

6. Learmonth Pastoral

7. Burrumbeet Plains

8. Haddon Hills and Common

9. Mount Rowan

10. Creswick and Canadian Forested Ridge

11. Mount Helen Native Vegetation

12. Buninyong Forested Ridge

13. Bonshaw / Magpie / Scotchman’s Lead Mining Landscape

14. Mount Clear Goldfields

15. Ballarat Urban Core

Urban core: second there is a map of the 13 character areas in the urban core, again followed by a double-page spread for each character area. The character areas are:

12.1 Ballarat Central – Planned Historic Core

12.2 Ballarat Central – Victoria Park and South Ballarat

12.3 Ballarat Central – Lake Wendouree

12.4 Soldiers Hill

12.5 Brown Hill

12.6 Bakery Hill

12.7 Ballarat East

12.8 Mount Pleasant

12.9 Canadian Valley

12.10 Sebastopol

12.11 Redan

12.12 North and West Ballarat – Post War Expansion

12.13 North Ballarat Approach Corridor


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4.4.2 Information on each character area Information is presented for each area under the following headings:

General description A short introduction to the location and main features of the area.

Key characteristics and features A number of dot points outlining the traits that come together to form the character of each area and special features where present.

Ballarat Imagine Includes, where known, reference to the places, features and descriptors that figure highly in responses to the Ballarat Imagine community consultation exercise.

Localities Reference is also made to localities within each area, the designated RAP (Registered Aboriginal Party) areas and historic shire and township boundaries.

Area map and key map Each description is also accompanied by an area map and a key map showing the area concerned. The boundaries depicted are not meant to be fixed to a particular line, they are indicative only and allowance should be made for overlaps and transitions between areas, particularly in the wider municipal landscape.


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INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREAS MUNICIPALITY OF BALLARAT

MAPPING BALLARAT’S HISTORIC LANDSCAPE: STAGE 1

60

0 1 3km

View of Mount Bolton Range Panorama

1

3

LAKE LEARMONTH

FRASER HILL

CARDINAL HILL

BAIRD HILL

VAUGHN HILL

MT GAP

MT BOLTON

MT BOLTON RD

REIDS RD

SUNRAYSIA HWY

LEES RD

MT BECKWORTH

View from lower slopes of Mount Bolton to the Waubra Hills

MUNICIPAL BOUNDARY


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INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 1. MOUNT BOLTON RANGE

12

3 3.1

4

5

67

7.112

10

9

9.1

8

11

1. Mount Bolton Range

General DescriptionThe Mount Bolton Range forms a standout feature on the northern boundary of the Municipality of Ballarat. The range is clothed largely with forest on the high ridges, with outcrops of granite boulders peppering the higher and steeper slopes. Large paddocks with a high proportion of rough grazing characterise the lower slopes, with remote properties served by a network of unmade tracks that circle the mountain range. Mount Bolton forms a discrete area with a distinct character to the surrounding rural landscapes of Learmonth and Creswick to the south and west. The area includes landscape features that outline the boundary between the Wadawurrung and the Dja Dja Wurrung.

Key Characteristics and Features• A largely forested mountain range forming a close

canopy on the top feathering out to a more open canopy below.

• Outcrops of granitic boulders on the high ground contrast with the smoother paddocks below.

• Large paddocks and extensive area of rough grazing on the lower slopes, textured with patches of gorse and other shrubs.

• Individual and clumps of mature eucalypts are scattered through the paddocks.

• Remote and large scale rural properties served by a network of unmade roads dominate the area.

• Panoramic views to Learmonth and its well maintained pastoral landscape to the south and to the wind farm clad rolling hills of Waubra to the west.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape, views, bushland, native flora and fauna

Localities: Mount Bolton / Waubra / GlendaruelHistoric Shire / Township: Former Shire of BallaratRAP Area: Dja Dja Wurrung / Wadawurrung

Indicative character areas


62

0 1 3km

Creswick Creek Plains looking north from Addington – Creswick Road

CATTLE STATION HILL

MT CAVERN

COGHILLS HILL

BAIRD HILL

FENTON HILL

ADDINGTON CRESWICK RD

COGHILLSRD

BALLARAT RAILWAY

CRESWICK CREEK

2

1

3

MU

NIC

IPA

L BO

UN

DA

RY

MUNICIPAL BOUNDARY


63

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 2.CRESWICK CREEK PLAINS

1

2

33.1

4

5

6 7

7.112

10

9

9.1

8

11

2. Creswick Creek Plains

General DescriptionThe Creswick Creek Plains form an area of flat, open pastoral land north of the Addington – Creswick Road. The general character of this landscape continues north-ward over the Municipal boundary towards the settle-ment of Clunes, where evidence of former gold mining activity becomes more prevalent. The area includes landscape features that outline the boundary between the Wadawurrung and the Dja Dja Wurrung.

Key Characteristics and Features• An area of large, flat, regular grazing paddocks

delineated mainly by post and wire fencing.• Few trees or hedgerows present.• Scattered and largely remote settlement pattern.• Large skies and expansive views to surrounding

distant hills; Mount Bolton and Mount Beckworth to the west and Creswick forested ridge to the east.

• The meandering Creswick Creek provides a striking feature within the flat plain.

• Cattle Station Hill forms an isolated conical hill within this extensive and largely flat landscape.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape and views

Localities: Mount Bolton / Glendaruel / Coghills Creek / Ascot / Creswick / Glendonald / TourelloHistoric Shire / Township: Former Shire of BallaratRAP Area: Dja Dja Wurrung / Wadawurrung



64

0 1 3km

MT CAVERN

MT BLOWHARD

MT HOLLOWBACK

STATE PARK

MT PISGAH

COGHILLS HILL

LAKE LEARMONTH

LEARMONTH

BAIRD HILL

BROWN HILL

SADDLEBACK HILL

WEATHERBOARD HILL

TOOLBAR HILL

CARDINALHILL

WEATHERBOARD RD

SUNRAYSIA HWY

Panoramic view over Brown Hill and Lake Learmonth from Avenue of Honour

View over Lake Learmonth and Saddleback Hill Remnant dry stone wall and Sister Hills in the background

The historic township of Learmonth on the edge of the lake

Avenue of mature plane trees along the main road

3

3.1

MU

NIC

IPA

L BO

UN

DA

RY


65

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 3. LEARMONTH PASTORAL

1

2

3 3.1

4

5

6 7

7.112

10

9

9.1

8

11

3. Learmonth Pastoral

General DescriptionLearmonth Pastoral forms an extensive agricultural area with standout conical hills creating an exceptional feature in the otherwise low-lying landscape. The historic township of Learmonth with its 19th century buildings and established exotic trees, parks and gardens stands at the centre of this well managed pastoral landscape. The area includes landscape features that outline the boundary between the Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung.

Key Characteristics and Features• A predominantly, open, rolling lowland area with

distinctive conical hills spreading through the landscape.

• A pastoral landscape of large, regular, well managed paddocks with many established features, including old farmstead complexes, boundary walls, mature windbreaks and some old hedgerows.

• Low lying wet grassland areas form a mosaic around the raised hills in the central part of the landscape.

• Area traversed by a gridded network of tracks and minor roads reflecting the area’s early subdivision pattern.

• Sweeping and distant views in all directions to the surrounding hills and ranges and forested ridgelines.

• A drift of tall wind turbines dominate the Sister Hills on the western boundary of the municipality.

• Lake Learmonth and historic township form a special feature and add considerably to the landscape character of the area.

• The Ballarat Avenue of Honour runs northwards through the area terminating at the monument on Weatherboard Road.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape, views, bushland, native flora and fauna• Parks and gardens, lakes• Tree avenues• History and heritage

Localities: Include Addington, Weatherboard, and Learmonth, Blowhard and parts of Ercildoune and Waubra to the west and parts of Burrumbeet and Windermere to the south.Historic Shire / Township: Former Shire of BallaratRAP Area: Wadawurrung and southern fringes of Dja Dja Wurrung



66

0 1 3km

Looking west over Lake Burrumbeet

Looking south over Burrumbeet Plains

View over the plains at Mitchell Park on the western edge of Ballarat

LAKE BURRUMBEET

ALFREDTON

BALLARAT AIRFIELD

CARDIGAN VILLAGE

SADDLEBACK HILL

4

MUNIC

IPAL

BOUNDARY


67

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 4. BURRUMBEET PLAINS

1

2

3 3.1

4

5

67

7.112

10

9

9.1

8

11

4 Burrumbeet Plains

General DescriptionThis is a very flat, largely pastoral area which extends westwards from Ballarat along the basalt plain. Lake Burrumbeet forms an extensive and exceptional water feature within the landscape.

Key Characteristics and Features• An extensive, flat agricultural landscape with little

tree cover but with occasional small plantation areas.

• Very large, rectangular grazing paddocks bordered by network of drainage channels and post and wire fencing.

• Network of small creeks and areas of low lying wet grassland.

• Area traversed by a regular grid pattern of minor tracks and roads.

• Ageing historic landscape features such as old farmsteads, boundary walls and hedges.

• Some isolated residential development along the Remembrance Drive road corridor.

• Open skies and long distance panoramic views to the hills and mountain ranges of the north and west.

• Lake Burrumbeet is a popular recreational venue with camping and sport facilities and evidence of past beautification tree planting schemes.

• The 22 kilometre Ballarat Avenue of Honour runs through the area and creates a prominent landscape feature with great social value.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape, views, bushland, native flora and fauna• Lakes

Localities: Include Burrumbeet, Bo Peep, Windermere, Cardigan, Mitchell Park, Lucas, Bunkers Hill and parts of Delacombe.Historic Shire / Township: Former Shires of Ballarat, Ripon and GrenvilleRAP Area: Wadawurrung



68

5

0 1 3km

SAGO HILL RD

TRUNK LEAD

ALFREDTON

BUNKERS HILL

HADDON COMMON BUSHLAND RESERVE

CARNGHAM RD

GREENHALGHS RD

BELLS RDMUNICIPAL BOUNDARY

View of the forested ridge formed by Haddon Common Grazing pasture leading up to Sago Hill

View within Haddon Common


69

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 5. HADDON HILLS AND COMMON

12

3 3.1

4

5

6 7

7.112

10

99.1

8

11

5 Haddon Hills and Common

General DescriptionForming a discrete area of largely forested, low rolling hills, Haddon Hills and Common provides a distinct feature on the horizon from the surrounding flat open plains to the north and west. An area of former gold mining, Haddon Common straddles the border of Ballarat and neighbouring Golden Plains.

Key Characteristics and Features• Low, rolling hills, largely forested with a mix of

open pasture on the lower ground.• Scattered rural residential properties and enclosed

paddocks within the forest canopy• Sand quarrying and previous gold mining evident

around Sago Hill.• Haddon Common is the northern extension of

a much larger forested area around Smythesdale, which forms a significant backdrop to views south from Ballarat.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape, views, bushland, native flora and fauna

Localities: Haddon / Bunkers HillHistoric Shire / Township: Former Shire of GrenvilleRAP Area: Wadawurrung



70

6

7

WENDOUREE

MT ROWAN

CRESWICK R.P

SULK

Y RD

CUMMINS RD

KENNEDYS RD

MUNICIPAL BOUNDARY

MT PISGAH

MINERS REST

0 1 3km

WESTERN FREEWAY

Large rural residential properties on the lower slopes of Mount Rowan

View over horse stables to Creswick Forest


71

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 6. MOUNT ROWAN

1

2

3 3.1

4

5

67

7.112

10

9

9.1

8

11

6 Mount Rowan

General DescriptionSituated between Miners Rest and the high ground of Creswick Forest, Mount Rowan forms a small but distinct landscape characterised by a mix of land uses, including small scale pasture, potato fields and horse stables. Rural living residential development has occurred on the foothill slopes of Mount Rowan itself and along the lower forested slopes of Creswick Forest.

Key Characteristics and Features• A generally open and low undulating landscape

rising up to the forested edge of Creswick Forest.• A mix of large and small scale rectangular grazing

paddocks and potato fields.• Rural residential blocks on the gentle lower slopes

of Mount Rowan and within the forested edge of Creswick Forest.

• Proximity of industrial and housing development along the Creswick Road Corridor.

• Open views north to the Learmonth hills and mountain ranges beyond.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape and views

Localities: Mount Rowan and parts of Miners Rest and InvermayHistoric Shire / Township: Former Shire of Ballarat / part of Former Shire of BungareeRAP Area: Wadawurrung



72

0 1 3km

Panorama of the Canadian Forest Ridge taken from Sovereign Hill Lookout

View of the forested ridge from Mount Clear with Mount Warrenheip in the distance

Small pastoral and rural living blocks form the edge of the forested ridge

7

7.1

MT WARRENHEIP

KIRK RESERVOIR

MT ROWAN

INVERMAY

SULKY

BALDHILLS

WHITE SWAN RESERVOIR

STRICKLAND PDE

WESTERN FREEWAY

MOORABOOL SHIRE

MUNICIPAL BOUNDARY


73

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 7. CRESWICK AND CANADIAN FORESTED RIDGE

1

2

3 3.1

4

5

67

7.112

10

9

9.1

8

11

7 Creswick and Canadian Forested Ridge

General DescriptionThe Creswick and Canadian Forested Ridge is a broad area of continuous and elevated forest cover which stretches for a considerable distance from Creswick in the north to Mount Helen and Buninyong in the south. It forms part of an extensive forested ridge defining the eastern boundary of the municipality and visually links with the much larger forest area of Enfield State Park to the south.

Key Characteristics and Features• An elevated, wide ridge running north-south along

the edge of the City of Ballarat. • Extensive forest cover, both native State Forest and

plantations, largely continuous along the ridge area with some sizeable gaps, notably Ballarat East north of Eureka Street and Brown Hill south of the Yarrowee Creek.

• A few rural residential blocks, mainly enclosed within the forest areas on the western fringes.

• Small paddock areas sporadically break the forest canopy, particularly on the fringes.

• Native and indigenous trees and shrubs throughout the area, particularly along the road corridors, and many areas on private land.

• A visually prominent ridgeline affording splendid views from Ballarat and the forested ridge itself framing views to the city on the approach from Melbourne.

• Plantation removal has interrupted the forest at the southern end, though with limited impact on the views from the CBD.

• The former old gold diggings and settlement of Little Bendigo. Other significant features include White Swan and Gong Gong reservoirs and walking tracks through the forest areas.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape, views, bushland, native flora and fauna• Accessible trails, parks and open spaces• Canadian Forest

Localities: Include Chapel Flat, Invermay, Glen Park, Nerrina, Brown Hill, Gong Gong, Leigh Creek, Warrenheip and parts of Ballarat East, Canadian, and Mount Clear.Historic Shire / Township: Former Shire of Bungaree, Ballarat and BuninyongRAP Area: Wadawurrung



74

0 1 3kmView over the native forest from the slopes of Mount Buninyong

Residential development within the forest

Horse paddocks in Mount HelenRoadside vegetation in the Mount Helen area

University of Ballarat Campus

MU

NICIPA

L

BOUNDARY

GREEN HILL

UNION JACK

MOUNT HELEN

BUNINYONG

MOUNT CLEAR

8


75

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 8. MOUNT HELEN NATIVE VEGETATION

1

2

3 3.1

4

5

67

7.112

10

9

9.1

811

8 Mount Helen Native Vegetation

General DescriptionThe locality of Mount Helen forms a discrete area of native forest, open paddocks, residential and commercial development. It is the location of the University of Ballarat campus and the adjacent Ballarat Technology Park. The native vegetation frames and encloses the settlement areas and forms a bridge between the forested ridge of Canadian Forest and the Buninyong forest to the south.

Key Characteristics and Features• An undulating forested area with a mosaic of open

grazing paddocks and rural living blocks. Recent residential development form enclaves within the forest edge.

• Significant native vegetation throughout the area particularly along the road corridors.

• A number of open paddocks given over to horse grazing.

• Largely a visually enclosed area with occasional views out over the forest and surrounding pastoral landscape.

• Ballarat Technology Park and the University of Ballarat campus form large but low-scale areas which nestle into the treed surrounds.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape, views, bushland, native flora and fauna• Accessible trails, parks and open spaces• University of Ballarat

Localities: Mount Helen.Historic Shire / Township: Former Shire of BuninyongRAP Area: Wadawurrung



76

View over the patchwork of native forest and farmland from the slopes of Mount Buninyong

Buninyong Township

View of extensive forest coverView back to Mount Buninyong

View along the main road to Mount Buninyong

MOUNT HELEN

BUNINYONG MT BUNINYONG

SCOTSBURN

GREENVILLE HILL

GREEN HILL

UNION JACK

0 1 3km

9.1

9

10

MU

NIC

IPA

L B

OUN DA

RY


77

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 9. BUNINYONG FORESTED RIDGE

1

2

3 3.1

4

5

67

7.112

10

9

9.1

811

9 Buninyong Forested Ridge

General DescriptionAn elevated, largely forested area in the south of the municipality dominated by Mount Buninyong and centred on the early historic township of Buninyong. The area includes rural residential areas and good pasture land, which becomes more prevalent on the lower eastern and western slopes.

Key Characteristics and Features• An elevated, wide ridge running north-south from

Mount Helen to the southern boundary of the municipality.

• Large areas of continuous forest canopy contrasting with the open pasture on the lower eastern slopes of Scotsburn.

• Significant areas of native vegetation south of the town mainly on private land.

• Rural residential blocks and pastoral properties characterise the township surrounds.

• Splendid views to and from Mount Buninyong, a significant feature not only to the locality and the wider municipality but also to all communities and visitors.

• The individual character of the historic township of Buninyong, its streetscapes and setting (9.1).

• Buninyong Creek and the site of former alluvial gold mining.

Ballarat Imagine• History and heritage• Landscape, views, bushland, native flora and fauna• Accessible trails, parks and open spaces

Localities: Buninyong and parts of Scotsburn and Durham Lead.Historic Shire / Township: Former Shire of BuninyongRAP Area: Wadawurrung



78

BUNINYONG

SEBASTOPOL

SCOTCHMAN’S LEAD

0 1 3km

Panoramic view over the landscape towards Scotchman’s Lead and Enfield State Forest on the horizon

Modern residential development along the road to Durham Lead

Remnant gold mining features in Magpie

Mullock heap opposite modern housing Former gold mining area along Cobblers Lane

MUNICIPAL BOUNDARY

YARRO

WEE CREE K

10


79

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 10. BONSHAW TO SCOTCHMAN’S LEAD MINING LANDSCAPE

1

2

3 3.1

4

5

67

7.112

10

9

9.1

811

10 Bonshaw to Scotchman’s Lead Mining Landscape

General DescriptionThe Bonshaw to Scotchman’s Lead Mining Landscape forms the south eastern boundary of the Municipality and in many ways shares its landscape character with neighbouring Golden Plains, particularly along the Yarrowee Creek corridor. Now a predominantly pastoral and rural living area, its landscape nevertheless features many hints of past gold mining activity.

Key Characteristics and Features• An undulating open landscape textured with evidence

of former gold mining activities. • Irregular, mixed pattern of rough and well managed

pasture and former disturbed land giving rise to patches of gorse and other woody weeds.

• Recent five acre block development, often isolated and visually prominent, contrasting with the older farmstead properties.

• Open views to the surrounding forested ridgelines to the south and east.

• Former gold mining communities of Bonshaw, Magpie, Scotchman’s Lead and Durham Lead and associated remaining features such as mullock heaps contribute significantly to the historic landscape character.

• The meandering Yarrowee Creek is a key feature central to the character of the area.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape, views, bushland, native flora and fauna• Yarrowee Trail

Localities: Include Bonshaw, Magpie, Scotchman’s Lead, Durham Lead and parts of Sebastopol and Buninyong.Historic Shire / Township: Former Shire of Buninyong and parts of Sebastopol and GrenvilleRAP Area: Wadawurrung



80

MOUNTCLEAR

MAGPIE

SEASTOPOL

MOUNTPLEASANT

0 1 3km

WHITEHORSE RD

YARR

OW

EE C

REEK

Panoramic view over Yarrowee Creek and water treatment pools

View of forest plantations from Whitehorse Road

View within the plantation area

11


81

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA 11. MOUNT CLEAR GOLDFIELDS

1

2

3 3.1

4

5

67

7.112

10

9

9.1

811

11 Mount Clear Goldfields

General DescriptionThe Mount Clear Goldfields forms a large open area occupying the Yarrowee Creek corridor between the residential areas of Sebastopol on the basalt plateau to the west and the built up areas of Mount Clear and Canadian Valley to the east. Close to the city centre, this largely disturbed landscape has been reclaimed for forestry and utilised for public utilities including refuse tips and water treatment plants. It is the location for Ballarat’s remaining gold mine currently in operation.

Key Characteristics and Features• A varied landform previously referred to as Yuille’s

Range and later as Whitehorse Range, dominated by large, mature forest plantations, water treatment lakes and an extensive former tip area.

• A diverse landscape, largely vacant, appearing remote and unsettling in parts with sporadic fly tipping.

• Sweeping views over the area from the Sebastopol escarpment and from Whitehorse Road. Elsewhere the extensive plantations create a largely enclosed landscape.

• The meandering Yarrowee Creek and associated riparian vegetation at the foot of the basalt escarpment forms a special landscape feature in the area.

• Significant historic landscape features associated with former gold mining.

• The Ballarat gold mine, currently in operation, is now largely screened by trees.

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape, views, native flora and fauna• Yarrowee Trail

Localities: Include Mount Clear and parts of Sebastopol and Magpie.Historic Shire / Township: Former Shire of BuninyongRAP Area: Wadawurrung



82


83

12.112.2

12.3

12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.10

12.11 12.8

12.3A

12.7C

12.9

12.7B

12.7A

12.5

12.4

12.12D12.13

12.6

12.1 Ballarat Central - Planned Historic Core12.2 Ballarat Central - Victoria Park and South Ballarat12.3 Ballarat Central - Lake Wendouree 12.3a Drummond St North Residential12.4 Soldiers Hill 12.5 Brown Hill 12.6 Bakery Hill 12.7 Ballarat East 12.7a Black Hill 12.7b Eureka 12.7c Golden Point12.8 Mount Pleasant 12.9 Canadian Valley 12.10 Sebastopol 12.11 Redan 12.12 North and West Ballarat - Post War Expansion 12.12a Delacombe 12.12b Alfredton 12.12c Wendouree and Miners Rest 12.12d Ballarat North12.13 North Ballarat Approach Corridor

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREASBALLARAT URBAN CORE

0 1 2km


84

0 250 500 1000m

STURT ST

BALLARAT STATION

CRESWICK RD

MID

LAN

D H

WY

DRU

MM

ON

D S

T N

ORT

H

BAKERY HILL

LAKE WENDOUREE

CITY OVAL

WESTERN OVAL

View of the central spine of Sturt Street from Bridge Street Mall View along Sturt Street from Raglan Street

View from Dana Street along Lydiard Street to the Post Office Tower View of Mount Warrenheip from Dana Street where it meets the crest of the basalt plateau

The verandahs of Lydiard Street and the iconic Post Office tower (source Ballarat Regional Tourism)

Lydiard Street – Mining School, brewery site and old gaol

12.2

12.3

12.1


85

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.1 BALLARAT CENTRAL – PLANNED HISTORIC CORE

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D

12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1

12.1 Ballarat Central – Planned Historic Core

General DescriptionThe planned historic core of central Ballarat is noted for its strong grid pattern laid out by Urquhart in 1852 on the bluestone plateau overlooking eastern Ballarat. It forms the civic and commercial heart of the city and presents a strong 19th century character for which Ballarat is renowned.

Key Characteristics and Features• The civic and commercial heart of the planned city centred

along Sturt Street and Lydiard Street these streetscapes display complementary but very different qualities.

• Sturt Street forms the main spine with its central garden reserve of lawns, mature trees, bandstand, fountain and statues creating a special feature.

• Lydiard Street, in contrast, has no street trees in its central section which is dominated by many fine and iconic buildings.

• Many diverse building types, styles, verandahs and street furniture along the main streets including the parallel streets of Mair and Dana Streets.

• Camp Street precinct with its angled grid is a physical reminder of its early history and position on the escarpment overlooking the first alluvial goldfields of East Ballarat.

• The remaining bluestone lanes which dissect the main blocks particularly between Sturt and Mair Streets.

• Exceptional vistas from the main streets particularly out to MountWarrenheip and along Lydiard Street from the old brewery chimney to the Railway Station and rising to Soldiers Hill.

• The three towers of Ballarat (Railway Station, Post Office and Town Hall) which forms a significant feature of the skyline when seen on the approaches to the city.

• Minor towers such as Craig’s Hotel, church spires, some features on buildings in Lydiard and Sturt Streets and chimney stacks also form important features.

Ballarat Imagine• Heritage• Streetscapes – bluestone channels, wide streets and verandahs• Architecture, parks and tree avenues• Sturt Street• Lydiard Street

Localities: Ballarat Central Historic Shire / Township: Township of BallaratRAP Area: Wadawurrung

Urban core character areas


86

0 250 500 1000m

STURT ST

EYRE ST

LA TROBE ST YARROWEE CREEK

CRESWICK RD

MID

LAN

D H

WY

LAKE WENDOUREE

VICTORIA PARK

LEA

RMO

NTH

ST

WESTERN OVAL

Tree lined Errard Street looking south from Urquhart Street

Tree avenues in Victoria Park

Bluestone channel, mature elm trees and gravel shoulders along Ascot Street

Pine clothed mullock heap in Victoria Park

12.2

12.3

12.812.11

12.12.2

12.12.1


87

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.2 BALLARAT CENTRAL – VICTORIA PARK AND SOUTH BALLARAT

12.2 Ballarat Central – Victoria Park and South Ballarat

General DescriptionAn older residential area laid out in a regular grid pattern on the basalt plateau to the south of the main historic core. The area is now largely characterised by established streetscapes and a mix of Victorian and early 20th century buildings and residences. Victoria Park established as a common area and laid out and planted in its present form in the late 19th century, provides a large open space on the western boundary of the area.

Key Characteristics and Features• Wide streets, many with mature ornamental trees forming

an attractive coherent streetscape. • Mainly older residential properties with a mix of single

storey weatherboard and brick buildings. • Bluestone channels, gravel edges, maintained grass verges,

footpaths and a variety of garden fences add interest to the residential street scene.

• Victoria Park provides a large open space on the western boundary of the historic city and is characterised by open grassland, some native, navigated by several mature tree lined drives.

• Victoria Park extends over a massive public area comparable in size with many capital city parks, such as the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, and includes playing fields, stockyards and an equestrian precinct.

• A large mullock heap (named ‘Mount Holled Smith’) is an evocative reminder of former gold mining activity in the area.

Ballarat Imagine• Heritage• Parks, gardens and old buildings• Greenery, beautiful gardens and streetscapes• Streetscapes – bluestone channels, wide streets, old

established trees, gravelled shoulders

Localities: Ballarat Central and NewingtonHistoric Shire / Township: Township of BallaratRAP Area: Wadawurrung

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D

12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



88

12.3 12.3A

12.2 12.1

0 250 500 1000m

CRESWICK RD

LAKE WENDOUREE

STURT ST

DRU

MM

ON

D S

T N

ORT

H

PRINCE OF WALES RECREATION RESERVE

CITY OVAL

SUNRAYSIA HWY

GIL

LIES

ST

NO

RTH

VICTORIA PARK

View over the lake to the city framed by Mounts Warrenheip and Buninyong

One of the many approaches to Lake Wendouree

Mature trees line most residential streets Webster Street


89

12.3 Ballarat Central – Lake Wendouree

General DescriptionThe large expanse of Lake Wendouree and its surrounding parks, boating sheds, mature trees and mix of historic building styles is one of the most popular features valued by the Ballarat community and visitors to the city.

Key Characteristics and Features• Lake Wendouree and its open skies and green surrounds

form the central character of the area with a mix of housing styles and building types around the lake shore.

• A significant number of new dwellings around the lake compared to the surrounding streets.

• Historically, development has been kept to a low scale (largely two-storey) with most properties addressing the greenery of the parade through low fences and mature gardens.

• A grid pattern of wide streets, many with mature European trees form an attractive streetscape with bluestone channels, gravel edges, maintained grass verges and a variety of garden fences adding interest to the residential areas.

• The residential area towards the city is less grand and the street pattern tighter indicating that it is the location of former workers cottages (12.3a). The residential properties are generally older with a mix of weatherboard and brick construction.

• Webster Street with its wide layout, mature avenue trees and larger residential properties, particularly towards the lake, forms a special feature in the area.

• Lake Wendouree with its open water and extensive reed beds is a major open space both for recreation and nature conservation. The continuous parkland fringe that surrounds the lake features significant buildings and sites including historic boat sheds and the Botanical Gardens.

• Significant and historic views from the western shore of Lake Wendouree towards the city, framed by Mounts Warrenheip and Buninyong and with a backdrop of the elevated forested ridgeline.

• Changing nature of views when circumnavigating Lake Wendouree.

Ballarat Imagine• Heritage• Parks, open spaces, lakes, and playgrounds• Greenery, beautiful gardens and streetscapes – bluestone

channels, wide streets, gravel shoulders, old established trees

• Landscape and views• Lake Wendouree

Localities: Lake WendoureeHistoric Shire / Township: Township of BallaratRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE 12.3 BALLARAT CENTRAL – LAKE WENDOUREE

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D

12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



90

0 250 500 1000m

LAKE WENDOUREE

BLACK HILL RESERVE

YARROWEE CREEK

BALLARAT NORTH

SOLIDIERS HILL

BALLARAT TRAIN STATION

CRES

WIC

K RD

HOWITT ST

Junction of Lydiard Street and Seymour Street looking over the city

View towards Black Hill from Clarendon Street

Junction of Ligar and Clarendon Street looking towards Ballarat East

12.3

12.7.1

12.4

12.5


91

12.4 Soldiers Hill

General DescriptionAs it name implies Soldiers Hill forms an elevated area of Ballarat, close to the CBD. Its rolling landform has given rise to striking views of the city, Ballarat East and the forested ridge and hills beyond. It was one of the first areas of Ballarat to be settled.

Key Characteristics and Features• An area of undulating high ground close to the city

centre.• Older established housing – Victorian and early 20th

century – with more recent infill development forming a strong grid pattern of wide streets with exotic deciduous trees forming an attractive streetscape.

• Grander homes on the hill above the CBD moving to smaller homes on the fringes to the north.

• Bluestone channels, gravel edges, maintained grass verges and a variety of garden fences adding interest to the residential areas.

• Axial vistas from the streets on the higher elevations mainly to the city, Ballarat East, Mount Warrenheip and Black Hill.

• Significant views from Black Hill to Lake Wendouree and the city skyline.

Ballarat Imagine• Heritage• Parks and open spaces, landscape and views• Greenery, beautiful gardens and streetscapes – bluestone

channels, wide streets, gravel shoulders, old established trees

• Black Hill

Localities: Soldiers HillHistoric Shire / Township: Township of BallaratRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE 12.4 SOLDIERS HILL

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D

12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



92

0 250 500 1000m

BLACK HILL RESERVE

YARROWEE CREEK

BALLARAT NORTH

SOLIDIERS HILL

HOWITT ST

View from Sim Street over the Brown Hills area to Canadian Forest Ridge and Mount Warrenheip

Suburban housing on Moola Street

View from Black Hill over the CBDStreet planting on Simpson Street, Ballarat North

12.7.1

12.4

12.5


93

12.5 Brown Hill

General DescriptionBounded by Soldiers Hill, the Western Freeway and Yarrowee Creek this is a largely a residential area characterised by mid to late 20th century development. Located within an area of former gold mining, the more suburban estates of Ballarat North and the northern fringes of Black Hill contrast with the rural subdivisions and housing enclaves within the forest cover below.

Key Characteristics and Features• An area of undulating landform on the edge of the

forested ridge.• Mainly mid to late 20th century residential development

ranging from the suburban layouts of Ballarat North to areas of larger lots, due to the steep terrain in places, within the forested setting of Brown Hill.

• In contrast to other areas of Ballarat the suburban residential areas have developed along a curvilinear street pattern with well maintained grass verges, concrete kerbs and native tree planting.

• The largely forested area in the eastern part feature public reserves alongside the Yarrowee Creek, including Chisholm Street and Nerrina Park and Wetlands.

• Significant historic features of former gold mining – the area forms part of the former Little Bendigo goldfield whose place names evoke the hardships of earlier times (Hit or Miss Gully).

Ballarat Imagine• Landscape, views, bushland, parks and open spaces• Yarrowee Trail• Black Hill

Localities: Brown Hill and part of Ballarat NorthHistoric Shire / Township: Township of Ballarat and part of Shire of BungareeRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.5 BROWN HILL

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



94

0 250 500 1000m

STURT STBRIDGE ST MALL

BALLARAT TRAIN STATION

GRANT ST

MAIR ST

YARROWEE CREEKMIDLAND HWY

VICTORIA ST

EUREKA ST

View of Ballarat skyline from top of Bakery Hill

Main Road approach to Bridge Street Mall

Bridge Street Mall

Mair Road below the bluestone plateau

12.7.2

12.6

12.7.3

12.4

12.1


95

12.6 Bakery Hill

General DescriptionBakery Hill is the area where Ballarat East meets the planned town of Ballarat Central and represents the historic approach from Geelong and Melbourne. At the heart of the initial gold rush and subsequent development, Bakery Hill and Main Road became an important focus for shops, services and meeting places and the location where the Eureka Flag was first raised. The area retains a number of historic buildings amongst the redevelopment following traffic improvement schemes in the 1970s and the opening of Bridge Street pedestrian mall in 1981. Key Characteristics and Features• An elevated area descending to the flats below the basalt

plateau with a real mix of commercial development and building styles.

• Mix of modern development and materials such as brick paving, signs, canopies and renovated shop frontages dilute the heritage built form.

• Bridge Street Mall which forms the main spine forms an inward looking space with tree planting and overhead canopies restricting views to Sturt Street.

• Bridge Street retains a number of historic commercial buildings and is flanked by twin service roads (Little Bridge Street and Curtis Street) leading to large car park areas. These areas also include supermarkets, commercial outlets and small industrial units, the latter concentrated around Mair Street.

• Main Road also retains a number of historic buildings, in particular a fine row of Victorian properties leading to Bridge Street, where the street character immediately changes.

• Significant views of the city skyline from the top of Bakery Hill

Ballarat Imagine• Heritage• Architecture, history – old buildings• Victoria Street

Localities: Bakery HillHistoric Shire / Township: Township of Ballarat EastRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.6 BAKERY HILL

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



96

12.6

12.4

12.5

0 250 500 1000m

12.7B

12.7A

12.7C

12.7A Black Hill

12.7B Eureka

12.7C Golden Point

Looking towards Black Hill

Curvilinear Eureka Street

Yarrowee Creek Channel

Typical Street – Gent Street

Rolling George Street

Old weatherboard housing along Humffray Street

Older cottages (Morres Street)

Warrenheip Creek

View to city skyline from Steinfeld Street North


97

12.7 Ballarat East

General DescriptionBallarat East forms a highly diverse and rich area of the city with a number of significant features. The area has a varied and undulating landform (in contrast to the western area of Ballarat) and together with the irregular streets, smaller land parcels, mainly weatherboard dwellings, the waterways and street trees forms a distinct character area with a great sense of variety, grand in places, patchy in others. This complex area is described below under three headings; Black Hill, Eureka and Golden Point.

Key Characteristics and FeaturesBlack Hill (12.7A)• A largely flat, early residential area between Victoria

Street and Yarrowee Creek at the foot of Black Hill with Humffray Street the main thoroughfare.

• Mostly weatherboard cottages in a grid pattern of narrow streets angled at locations to navigate variations in local topography. Unmade minor back streets.

• Streetscapes mainly consist of grass verges and concrete kerbs with some areas of tree planting, both deciduous and native trees, and occasional bluestone drainage channels.

• The rail corridor with wide tree-lined reserves on either side forms a strong feature within the area.

• Significant views of the city skyline and to Sovereign Hill and the Canadian Forest from the top of Black Hill, a major landform dominated by its mature conifers.

Eureka (12.7B)• An undulating, early residential area south of Victoria

Street giving rise to opportune views out to the Canadian Forest and down to Golden Point.

• A mix of residential styles with many older weatherboard properties. Streetscapes with established trees, well maintained grass verges and bluestone drainage channels. Tree planting varies from mature oak and other exotics to more recent native species.

• Modern housing enclaves also populate the area, alongside the creeks and particularly on the higher eastern fringes.

• Specimen Vale and Warrenheip Creek create a ribbon of open green space in the shallow valleys between the housing areas and the main roads on the ridges. The creeks have largely been channelled with bluestone bases and brick lined walls.

• The Ballarat East civic area centred on Barkly Street, including the historic fire station, public library and the old Town Hall gardens, forms a special feature of the area.

Barkly Street – the main approach into Ballarat East

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.7 BALLARAT EAST

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1


• Another special feature is the Eureka Stockade Memorial Park and the recently opened Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (M.A.D.E.).

Golden Point (12.7C)• A mix of formal and informal recreation space

and older housing areas on the former Ballarat Flats.

• A largely irregular pattern of narrow streets with grass verges and occasional street trees and a mix of older building types.

• Mature avenue trees line either side of the main Yarrowee Creek channel which forms a dominant feature within the area.

• Llanberis Reserve and neighbouring skateboard park provide popular recreational venues alongside Main Road.

Ballarat Imagine• History and heritage• Streetscapes – wide streets, old established trees,

gravel shoulders and bluestone channels• Landscape, views, parks and open spaces • Victoria Street• Black Hill• Ballarat Wildlife Park

Localities: Ballarat East, Eureka, Golden PointHistoric Shire / Township: Township of Ballarat EastRAP Area: Wadawurrung


98

0 250 500 1000m

YARROWEE CREEK

SKIPTON ST

GRANT ST

SOVEREIGN HILL

MOUNT PLEASANT

ELSWORTH ST WEST

MA

IN R

DC

AN

AD

IAN

CRE

EK

Older style housing on Laurie Street

Ballarat East Bowling Club nestled into a cutting left by former mining

Modern housing on Sovereign Hill

End of Yarrowee Creek bluestone channel and start of reserve planting

12.10

12.9

12.8

12.11

12.7C


99

12.8 Mount Pleasant

General DescriptionMount Pleasant is an established residential area between the Yarrowee Creek channel and the high ground of Sovereign Hill. Occupying an undulating landform as it rises from Golden Point, the area displays a mix of older residences and mature streetscapes and more modern housing development, particularly on the higher western slopes of Sovereign Hill and the land south of Elsworth Street West.

Key Characteristics and Features• A largely elevated area of Ballarat East sloping down to

the Yarrowee Creek. • A mix of residential styles with many older weatherboard

and brick built properties on the lower ground. • Streetscapes with established trees, well maintained grass

verges and bluestone drainage channels. Tree planting varies from mature exotics to more recent native species.

• Areas of modern housing particularly south of Elsworth Street.

• Significant views of the city skyline from the upper slopes of Sovereign Hill.

• The wide corridor formed by the Yarrowee Creek channel forms a major green spine along the western boundary of the area.

Ballarat Imagine• Heritage• Streetscapes – wide streets, old established trees, gravel

shoulders and bluestone channels• Sovereign Hill• Yarrowee Creek

Localities: Mount PleasantHistoric Shire / Township: Township of Ballarat East and northern part of Shire of BuninyongRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.8 MOUNT PLEASANT

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



100

0 250 500 1000m

SOVEREIGN HILL CANADIAN

MOUNT CLEAR

MOUNT PLEASANT

MA

IN R

DG

EELO

NG

RD

GREEN HILL RD

CA

NA

DIA

N C

REEK

WHITEHOR SE RD

View over housing to Canadian Forest from Wilson Street

Older properties and established street trees along Clayton Street

Looking into Pennyweight Park

Canadian Creek looking to Sovereign Hill

Lake Esmond

12.9

12.7B

12.8


101

12.9 Canadian Valley

General DescriptionAn area of residential and mixed development along the Canadian Creek valley situated between the high grounds of Sovereign Hill at the start of the White Horse Range and the Canadian Forested Ridge. The Sovereign Hill visitor attraction together with a variety of informal parks and forest cover, particularly on the eastern slopes add greatly to the character of this area.

Key Characteristics and Features• A gently rolling landform with a patchwork of residential

areas, parks, open spaces and commercial development along Main Road.

• The area is defined to the west by the steep rise and to the east by the former Buninyong railway line.

• Mixed housing periods with native trees and wide grass verges and some areas of older residential styles with established mature street trees.

• Pockets of pre-war housing and scattered older buildings in other areas and some pockets of modern housing including Canadian Lakes.

• Areas of indigenous vegetation and some forest cover.• Network of parks and open spaces including creeks, lakes

and channels reflecting the pattern of former gold mining.• Sovereign Hill a major visitor attraction linking the area

with Golden Point and Ballarat East.

Ballarat Imagine• Heritage• Landscape, views, parks and open spaces – Canadian

Forest• Sovereign Hill• Lake Esmond

Localities: Canadian, northern part of Mount ClearHistoric Shire / Township: Shire of BuninyongRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.9 CANADIAN VALLEY

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



102

0 250 500 1000m

YARR

OW

EE C

REEKHERTFORD ST

ALB

ERT

ST

SEBASTOPOL

MORSHEAD PARK

View south along Albert Street with recently planted median strip

Vickers Street looking west

Charlotte Street

View east from Sebastopol escarpment Recent housing development on Westcliffe

12.10

12.11

12.12A


103

12.10 Sebastopol

General DescriptionSituated on the basalt plateau above Yarrowee Creek, this is an area of mixed residential and commercial development either side of Albert Street, part of the Midland Highway between Ballarat and Buninyong. It is bordered to the north by the largely residential area of Redan and to the south by the undulating landscape of former mining areas of Bonshaw and Magpie.

Key Characteristics and Features• A mostly flat area on the basalt plain running eastwards to

the abrupt slopes of the escarpment over Yarrowee Creek.• Albert Street, the main road through the area, displays

intensive sections of commercial strip development with isolated pockets of historic buildings.

• Away from the main street this former area of intensive deep lead gold mining has left a legacy of mixed redevelopment, varied street layouts and a patchwork of open spaces particularly along the Yarrowee Creek side.

• Wide streets and a mix of single storey housing, many post WW2, with grass verges, concrete kerbs, gravel edges in the older areas, and occasional street trees, mainly native.

• Modern housing developments in scattered pockets throughout the area, particularly on the eastern side of the Midland Highway and often right up to the edge of the Yarrowee Creek escarpment.

• Network of open spaces linking the Yarrowee Trail and expansive views from the escarpment are special features of the area.

• Within the residential areas on the plateau, views are largely enclosed with no borrowed landscape vistas like in other parts of the city.

Ballarat Imagine• Heritage• Parks and open spaces, accessible trails, native flora and

fauna• Yarrowee Trail

Localities: Sebastopol Historic Shire / Township: Shire of SebastopolRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.10 SEBASTOPOL

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



104

0 250 500 1000m

MORSHEAD PARK

REDAN

VICTORIA PARK

LA TROBE ST

RUBICON ST

SKIP

TON S

T

SUTT

ON

ST

YARRO WEE

CRE

EK

Mature trees on Darling Street Curvilinear Campbell Drive on eastern side of Skipton Street

Ripon Street Redan Wide verges and street trees on Cook Street

12.2

12.10

12.8

12.1112.12A


105

12.11 Redan

General DescriptionRedan, like Sebastopol, is situated on the basalt plateau above Yarrowee Creek and forms a small discrete residential area. It is bounded to the north roughly by La Trobe Street and to the south by Rubicon Street as it passes into Sebastopol. The industrial area of Delacombe forms a distinctive boundary to the west as does the Yarrowee Creek corridor to the east.

Key Characteristics and Features• A mostly flat area on the basalt plain running eastwards to

the abrupt slopes of the escarpment over Yarrowee Creek.• A more coherent and established area than neighbouring

Sebastopol or Delacombe with a regular grid pattern of wide residential streets forming the dominant character.

• Street layout becomes more angled and curvilinear on the east side of the Midland Highway, influenced by the course of the creek and the undulations of the basalt edge.

• Mainly older style residential properties, both timber and brick, with established street trees and bluestone channels adding to the streetscape character.

• The bluestone paved Redan Creek forms a hidden feature at the back of the residential lots.

• Within the residential areas on the plateau, views are largely enclosed with no major ‘borrowed landscape’ vistas like in other parts of the city.

• In contrast fine views from the escarpment edge over the Yarrowee Creek corridor where road alignments permit.

Ballarat Imagine• Heritage• Streetscapes – wide streets, bluestone channels, gravelled

shoulders, old established trees.

Localities: Redan Historic Shire / Township: Shire of BallaratRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.11 REDAN

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



106

12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

0 1 2 3km

LAKE WENDOUREE

WINTERS SWAMP

ALFREDTON

WENDOUREE

DELACOLBE

STURT ST

Grandview Grove Wendouree

Grevillea Road Wendouree

Indi Street Alfredton

New housing in Alfredton

Industrial Winter Street and market saleyards


107

12.12 North and West Ballarat

General DescriptionThis is mainly an area of post WW2 expansion on the north and western fringes of 19th century Ballarat occupying the flat basalt plain. It continues to be an area of residential and commercial / industrial development and includes four residential localities; Wendouree and Invermay Park in the north and Alfredton and Delacombe to the west. These are separated from each other by industrial zones and areas of open space including two major golf courses.

Key Characteristics and Features• Development has spread across the flat basalt plain

creating a mix of major residential localities and large scale industrial estates. Other large landholdings within this framework include golf courses, parks and recreation reserves, and the extensive area of the new cemetery in Invermay Park.

• Each residential area has essentially the same development pattern. A regular grid with grass verges, concrete kerb edges and occasional native tree planting characterise the older parts of the area, whereas later development has occurred around crescents and courts and are more inward looking.

• There is a mix of older industrial areas within the current zones which includes the extensive area of Ballarat’s stockyards at Delacombe.

• The area has expanded northwards along the Sunraysia Highway to include the old township of Miners Rest. Recent housing developments now form a dominant feature of this corridor.

• There are distant views to the hill ranges of the north and west from the fringes of this area, but views within the residential and industrial areas are largely enclosed and inward looking.

• The area includes Winter Swamp, of major significance to the indigenous community.

• A key section of the 22 kilometre Ballarat Avenue of Honour and the Ballarat Arch of Victory are significant features within the area.

Ballarat Imagine• Parks and playgrounds

Localities: Delacombe, Alfredton, Wendouree, Invermay Park and parts of Ballarat North and Lake WendoureeHistoric Shire / Township: Shire of Ballarat and Shire of GrenvilleRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.12 NORTH AND WEST BALLARAT

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



108

0 0.5 1 2km

LAKE WENDOUREE

WENDOUREE

SOLDIERS HILL

BALLARAT NORTH

STURT ST

SUNRAYSIA HWY

MID

LAN

D H

WY

Midland Highway approach from Creswick

12.13

12.4

12.3A

12.12D12.12C


109

12.13 North Ballarat Approach Corridor

General DescriptionThis area forms a wide corridor along the main northern approach from Creswick and Maryborough and is dominated by a mix of old and new industry and other commercial development. The corridor starts at the Western Freeway junction and runs all the way into the city at Market Street.

Key Characteristics and Features• On the outer fringes a very wide and visually disparate road

corridor with a real mix of building scales and styles. • A multitude of power lines, fencing and signage styles. • A number of older industrial buildings populate the corridor

particularly towards the centre of the city. • As the city centre is approached there are visual links to

the old cemetery and good views of the city skyline south of Macarthur Street before the highway dips down to the Webster Street Roundabout.

• The Eureka Stadium, the home of North Ballarat FC, is a significant feature within the area.

Ballarat Imagine• Eureka Stadium

Localities: Wendouree, Invermay Park Historic Shire / Township: Shire of BallaratRAP Area: Wadawurrung

INDICATIVE CHARACTER AREA BALLARAT URBAN CORE12.13 NORTH BALLARAT APPROACH CORRIDOR

12.2

12.3

12.10

12.9

12.7B

12.7A12.6

12.812.11

12.7C

12.13

12.4

12.5

12.3A

12.12D12.12C

12.12B

12.12A

12.1



110

5 DEVELOPING THE HUL APPROACH FOR BALLARAT: STAGE 2 AND BEYOND

5.1 Moving from Stage 1 to Stage 2 Stage 1 enabled the initial exploration of how to develop and deliver an historic landscape approach – the HUL approach – by examining possible methodologies through published material from a number of writers including Ron van Oers, and working with the brains trust group to explore possibilities and challenges.

Our work in Stage 1 has thrown into clear relief the following priorities for Stage 2:

the need to build a community-based values approach into the heart of the Stage 2 methodology, extending significantly the Ballarat Imagine work

the importance of defining the geographic extent of the area to be examined, given the multiple urban focal points within the municipality of the City of Ballarat and the distinctive identities of these and of the more dispersed rural communities

the breadth of the HUL concept and the potential for strong community engagement with these new ideas, so long as they can be well communicated

the importance of engaging with community expectations to ensure that they are realistic in relation to the resources available to the City of Ballarat

the potential of a landscape-based approach to integrate and strengthen appreciation and protection of Ballarat’s heritage, recognising that heritage is a multi-facetted attribute embodied in Ballarat’s urban landscape and in the life of the communities of Ballarat

new ways of seeing and engaging with heritage – for the community, for particular interest groups and the City of Ballarat – by recognising heritage as a dynamic and productive element in the urban landscape and in urban life.

The development of the indicative characterisation framework in Stage 1 revealed the potential to combine technical and community-based perspectives. The Stage 1 version provides an analysis derived from a technically and visually based methodology. A short field trip through Ballarat East with several Ballarat East Network (BEN) members, revealed their particular appreciation of this part of Ballarat’s urban landscape (see Section 3.4.3). Initial meetings with Wadawurrung highlighted their cultural reading of ‘country’ and their deep feelings of connection to all things within their traditional lands. A shared perspective across both communities was the importance of being able to see stars in the night sky.

The potential for creating a dialogue between these different technical and community perspectives offers an exciting opportunity for Stage 2. These ideas are explored further in 5.2, and a framework for Stage 2 is sketched out in 5.3.

5.2 Potentialities of HUL This section explores a number of aspects of the HUL approach and their potentialities for the City of Ballarat in the Stage 2 project and beyond.

5.2.1 Conceptualising complexity The HUL approach is complex and the range of factors to be examined is potentially vast. This is both an opportunity and a challenge. The HUL approach does not have an established methodology or even a road map. It is an exciting assemblage of concepts, some of which are well-established in Australian or international heritage practices, while others are largely untried within a practically-focused strategic urban planning project.


111

The conceptualisation of the historic urban landscape requires a multi-factorial analysis of the physical place and the multiple human readings, perceptions and values. This is evident in some of the descriptions of contemporary notions of urban settlements - poetic and evocative, but extraordinarily broad – as expressed by writers on the HUL approach:

‘legible, multi-sensory vessels of spirit of place that combine tangible and intangible heritage’

‘the historic urban landscape expresses traditions and values, forming an accreted record of interactions between people and place’ (O’Donnell & Turner: 2).

This means that ‘almost every trace of the past’ is now encompassed within the concept of cultural heritage ‘first objects and monuments, then cities, landscapes, species and even human communities’ Sonkoly (2011:3).

The question needs to be asked whether the breadth of the HUL concept is too expansive to be applied within a defined project and a limited timescale? And how will the communities of Ballarat respond to such a significant shift? The way forward will need careful definition and clear communication.

Defining principles In developing a ‘road map’ for the application of the HUL approach in China, van Oers (2013) refers to the threefold objectives of the HUL approach as:

the management of change or the maintaining of continuity

the improvement of living conditions for local populations

the creation of a virtuous circle in urban conservation.

Creating simplicity out of complexity will be an important part of shaping HUL to fit Ballarat. It will enable a clear focus and support effective communication of the HUL concept community-wide.

The guiding objectives for Ballarat could be derived from the four principles emerging from the Ballarat Strategy – Our Vision for 2040. These all reflect a vision-based approach to the future, an aspect of the HUL approach that will be discussed further below.

Our beautiful and unique city: in relation to HUL this principle expresses the connection between the community and their places, collections and traditions, active engagement with the urban landscape and a strong sense of identity.

Ballarat’s quality of life – a great mix of city and country: in relation to HUL this principle expresses a strong sense of community, a desire for a well-designed and cared for urban landscape combined with important elements of urban functionality – access to work, facilities and services. Improving equity in the way that services, facilities and amenity standards are applied across the municipality could form part of this principle.

Sustainable growth that benefits our community: in relation to HUL this principle expresses the need for growth in housing and economic activities to provide community-wide benefits and avoid some risks.

A healthy, safe community: in relation to HUL this principle expresses the need to improve living standards and particularly health and wellbeing across the community; connection to place and a strong sense of identity is an important aspect of well-being. Health and wellbeing is also linked to housing quality, income, education and access to services. Affordability is an issue. Tackling these social issues requires action across many fronts, not limited to the usual scope of urban planning.

In Stage 2, and as community responds to the principles drafted for the Ballarat Strategy and engages with the idea of an imagined and vision-directed approach, it will be important to further define how the HUL approach can deliver on some of these principles. Naturally, it will not be the only tool. But with Ballarat Strategy so firmly built on the community’s


112

appreciation for their heritage, HUL approach could be seen as a significant way that change can be successfully integrated into and benefit loved urban and rural landscapes.

Key messages will need to be distilled: an example from China road map article (van Oers 2013) says that the HUL approach uses ‘heritage assets and local culture to direct planning and design of the contemporary city’. This is a clear and powerful message.

Encompassing the tangible and intangible Another aspect of complexity is evident in the need to consider both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. How might this be done? The wealth of heritage experience is in the mapping of tangible expressions of heritage, generally by experts. The City of Ballarat is fortunate to have undertaken a number of heritage studies over a period of 25 years. Together these studies should provide a sound foundation at least for Ballarat itself, although probably not for all other parts of the municipality.

The HUL approach proposes that the tangible heritage values and attributes should be confirmed by the community. Ballarat Imagine responses included concerns that valued places had been or were about to be lost, indicating that past heritage studies had not captured all of the values and/or that protection may be inadequate.

A strand of work in Stage 2 could be working with locality-based communities to check the values recognised in past heritage studies and identify any value, attribute or place gaps. This activity could form part of other community-based ‘mapping’ activities. At the same time intangible attributes should also be examined to understand how they are expressed. For example:

spatially, that is they are embodied in some aspect of the urban environment or are focused around particular urban landscape elements

in memory, potentially triggered spatially or experientially

in traditions, activities and events that arise from the community

in stories that link us to the past and to other people and their experiences

in the sensory qualities experienced at particular places.

A well-known example of a continuing tradition linked to a particular place is the dawn service on Anzac Day. A visit to the local memorial afterwards evokes memories. The place is a locus of feelings and experiences that contribute to a sense of identity.

This type of work is relatively new, and approaches developed and applied in Stage 2 would be exploratory.

5.2.2 Urban planning tools HUL brings with it a range of broadly described urban planning tools (see below). One task in Stage 2 will be to examine these tools in relation to the circumstances of Ballarat and the frameworks available in Victoria and Australia, recognising that these planning frameworks vary across the country.

As part of urban planning, cultural heritage is still largely spatially framed. Survey methods focus on places and their fabric, not values or stories, and the main protective mechanisms designed to manage change are derived from the urban planning tools of land use zoning and development control.

The way planning tools are used is also an important consideration. Heritage studies and citations for individual places and precincts are designed to highlight why a place is significant, but different interpretations are always possible, given that we each ‘see’ through our own experience and knowledge. Community interpretations and those of planners and heritage advisers may be quite different. Guidelines can assist, but most to date have been expert and not community-driven documents. And there is no real guidance on management and implementation; the focus of studies and planning scheme amendments is on achieving a level


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of statutory protection, not on how change can achieve the multiple goals embodied in the HUL approach.

This has long been acknowledged as a challenge in heritage practice, and requires new approaches if intangible heritage and the values associated with a place’s character are to be considered. Because of this, collaborative approaches, rather than simply consultation processes, need to be implemented in order to have true community driven decision making in planning.

For example, working with the Office of Aboriginal Affairs Victoria the Wadawurrung Aboriginal Corporation have mapped their cultural associations with Mount Buninyong and put in place a framework to recognise and protect the intangible attributes of this cultural place under Victorian legislation (that is, the Aboriginal Heritage Act). This is a good first step in recognising intangible attributes of such places however there are still challenges arising from the present legislative framework.

Urban planning mechanisms alone are often inadequate to tackle the issues in heritage conservation and create the ‘virtuous circle’ referred to in the HUL literature. Many Australian local government authorities have used a range of other tools, often finding them a valuable adjunct to planning: examples include financial tools to support heritage retention (differential rating and rebates, transferable development rights, revolving loan funds and grants, and free heritage advice), education (interpretation, heritage walks, school programs, heritage days etc) and recognition (awards, plaques etc).

In 2010, the City of Ballarat adopted a heritage strategy Preserving Our Heritage Strategy in response to a number of cases of demolition by neglect. The strategy focuses on the built environment and proposes an approach based on change management and community engagement with minimal focus on planning. It offers a range of new initiatives in partnership with the community to assist and encourage owners of heritage properties to preserve and maintain these important living places. There are a number of specific action areas. Ballarat also has a suite of planning tools – strategies, plans, guidelines and the planning scheme itself that together provide a framework for heritage protection and social, economic and environmental sustainability and well-being.

An important question is how well are these existing tools working to retain the physical and spatially-based attributes that form a valued part of Ballarat’s urban environment? How will they stand up to current and anticipated pressures?

And will spatial planning responses be sufficient to protect the expanded concepts of cultural heritage – meanings, perceptions, identities, and values? If not what other kinds of cultural/social planning and policy tools could be used?

The HUL approach advocates a combination of four types of tools:

civic engagement tools to engage and empower communities and stakeholders to identify the key values in their urban areas, develop visions and agree on actions to safeguard what is valued

knowledge and planning tools to recognise and document what is valued – natural, cultural, tangible and intangible, and to monitor and manage change

regulatory systems that respond to local circumstances and provide a framework of legislation, policy and guidance suited to protecting urban heritage values, and can include traditional and customary systems

financial tools that are designed to build capacities, support innovative and sustainable solutions, including fostering private investment that will help achieve these goals.

In Stage 2 it is recommended that a review and evaluation of all four types of tools currently used by the City of Ballarat is undertaken in relation to the challenges faced across the


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municipality and in particular locations. This should encompass both spatial planning and cultural/social planning tools and take the form of an analysis of:

the impacts of change combined with the effectiveness of past policy and strategy implementation

potentially conflicting policies in Planning Scheme that may have the capacity to impact negatively on Ballarat’s heritage and valued character

the overall condition of Ballarat’s heritage.

It is expected that such an analysis would lead to recommendations on specific actions, for example, the need for a Planning Scheme review.

If resources permit, an examination of other possible tools could be undertaken, looking at both international and Australian examples in relation to the issues faced in Ballarat and the legislated roles for local government. It will be important to be open to the potential discovery of new ways of achieving the desired outcomes, and to actively involve those with hands-on experience in managing the Ballarat urban landscape in this work.

Together with other Stage 2 findings this could guide the implementation plan for the HUL.

5.2.3 Boundaries The study area boundary for Stage 1 has been the municipality of the City of Ballarat. The boundary is administrative and while it represents an amalgam of former municipalities it does not encompass all of these prior administrative units. Nor does it reflect natural boundaries such as watersheds – the Yarrowee Creek for example crosses into the adjoining Golden Plains Shire. Nor does the study area reflect the extent and boundaries of the country occupied by either of the two Indigenous traditional owner groups, the Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples. Instead the boundary crosses and cuts lines of human activity and social connections, both ancient and modern.

The municipality as a whole is also many settlements – a large city, smaller townships and rural areas – each with its own community and identity. It is not a single urban landscape.

Looking at the HUL approach and its derivation suggests that it would normally be applied to the township of Ballarat and its setting, with the boundary defined through a process of analysis of environmental, historical and contemporary connections and relationships. The notion of landscape implies a lower level of boundedness, and a more fluid and open reading, and yet practicality requires a boundary.

The City of Ballarat believes that any urban planning solutions developed in Stage 2 should be available equally across the municipality, based on the issues to be addressed. The Stage 1 analysis of the physical and visual landscape, has demonstrated its diversity and the problems associated with using the administrative boundary.

In Stage 2 it is proposed that the focus is Ballarat township and its setting. If resources permit, the approach developed and applied to Ballarat could then be applied to each of the smaller settlements and rural areas. Alternatively this could form a subsequent stage. The settings defined for each settlement may overlap, bringing a richer appreciation of the importance of these settings, recognising that they contribute values to more than one settlement. Where a settlement or rural area and its setting extend beyond the City of Ballarat, a partnership with the adjoining municipality could be formed.

A key deliverable in Stage 2 will be a Statement of Significance for the municipality as a whole, with a more detailed understanding of significance delivered for those areas that are the primary focus of Stage 2.


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5.2.4 Leading change The HUL approach advocates using the tension between retaining what is valued and allowing change. This is already the central domain of urban planning as it is practiced today.

Typically, change is set against no change, and debates about specific cases quickly become polarised. This polarisation is deeply embedded in the planning system.

Urban planning is about managing change. What HUL appears to be offering is leadership and vision: the opportunity to choose the future and respond to external pressures in the way that a community desires. It is not clear how this can be achieved, although it is a worthy goal. It may be that the approach will need to be more process-driven than rule-based, using a problem solving framework.

In Stage 2, ways of addressing the tensions between change and no change could be explored further. Possibilities include articulating desired futures, working with trade-offs, and exploring consensus-based decision making. These could be separate from the main project and may interest planning academics and their students. Or they could be driven from the Ballarat Strategy.

5.2.5 Community and communities No place has just one community. Communities are self-defining entities. Only the community knows who is a member of a particular community and who is not.

Likewise, identities are multiple and shared, as well as individuated. The HUL approach strongly focuses on engagement with communities and allows the idea of multiple identities.

The task of protecting ‘different levels of traditional urban practices through preserved tangible frames and through the documentation of these practices’ requires an approach that recognises local identities and seeks to understand how these identities are held through the tangible urban landscape in conjunction with ‘specific intangible cultural practices’ (Sonkoly 2011:6-7).

Understanding identities may offer a framework for recognising the layering of ‘significances’: by individuals –through his or her view, by the community through its value-bound definition, and through society by taking genius loci (the spirit of the place) into account (Sonkoly 2011: 6).

The Ballarat Imagine component of the Ballarat Strategy, reported on in Section 3.4, adopted a simple yet effective approach to identifying places and qualities within the Ballarat municipality that the community ‘love’ and want to ‘retain’. It provides a set of interesting perspectives that can be tested on the community.

Stage 2 offers the potential to work at a more local level with self-defined communities to explore and document their response to their lived environment through a combination of stories, mapping and physical exploration.

5.3 Framework for Stage2 Stage 2 will deliver a HUL approach for Ballarat. It will do this through a series of project elements, some in sequence and others in parallel. We have defined four key elements for Stage 2, recognising that establishing a HUL approach is a long term endeavour:

1. Defining 2. Understanding 3. Pressures 4. Directions.

Each is explained below. A summary is provided in Section 5.5.

Because HUL is a potentially transformative process, what is defined here may evolve during Stage 2. New and unexpected partnerships may emerge too, and open up new opportunities.

Community engagement is overarching and needs to be built into all aspects of Stage 2.


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Figure 5.1: The elements of the HUL approach for Stage 2

5.3.1 Engaging Ballarat’s community Establishing an approach to working collaboratively with the many and diverse communities of Ballarat is a critical component in the HUL approach. The engagement already occurring through the Ballarat Strategy demonstrates a clear commitment to such an approach.

Community engagement will need to form part of all aspects of the Stage 2 project.

Communities means all those with an interest – residents, land owners, local workers, interest groups, institutions, businesses – and includes locals and people from elsewhere. Other levels of government will also need to be engaged.

Adopting a collaborative approach is recommended, using the spectrum IAP2 (International Association for Public Participation). This framework is provided in Appendix 3.

Collaborate means:

To partner with stakeholders and the broader public in each aspect of the decision, including the development of alternatives and the identification of the preferred solution.

A community engagement strategy will need to be developed for Stage 2, and to guide the future implementation of the HUL approach, based on the results of the Stage 2 project.

5.3.2 Defining Ballarat HUL needs to be defined and communicated. Key principles need to be confirmed and clear messages defined. The goals of HUL for Ballarat need to be defined – these goals are in essence a ‘promise’ to the community of Ballarat

For example, the promise of the Ballarat HUL approach could be:

Ballarat is a much loved place. Through this project we will find out more about what our communities value and why. We will explore new ways to document what Ballarat people value and build tools so that more can be added in future. We will evaluate the ways we look after heritage – both tangible and intangible - across the whole urban landscape. We will actively and creatively

engage our communities.

HUL will provide a values-based vision for caring for Ballarat’s urban landscape.

Once this promise is defined, specific goals for the Stage 2 project can be defined.

Communicating HUL approach will be very important. It is a complex, all-embracing strategic planning concept and may not be readily understood. And there is a risk it will be


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seen as ‘the solution to everything’, thus raising community expectations to an unachievable level.

5.3.3 Understanding Understanding the place and values held by the communities of Ballarat is at the heart of HUL.

The Stage 1 analysis has started to explore ways of seeing and understanding. Understanding occurs in many ways. As we have presented in Section 3, one way is to examine the place thematically: by using a framework of themes that structure human history and processes of settlement, we can discern particular patterns in a place and see how it may differ from other places. Themes also help us avoid privileging dominant stories by encouraging us to look more broadly.

We can also look at a place from the deep past, building up an understanding by starting with the ways the land was formed, its geology, water forms, plants and animals for example, and adding human and cultural layers as they occurred over time. This way of understanding the landscape enables us to see deeper layers and to examine how they have influenced what we see today. For example, in Ballarat the edge of the basalt flow that cuts through the centre of the CBD creates a dramatic landscape feature that has been used to advantage through the placement of buildings. Another example is the Aboriginal creation stories and ancestral beings that remain evident in the landscape today, connecting past and present through story and memory.

Another way is to start from the present and ask: What made this place? How did it start? Why did it develop in particular ways? By starting from the present, we connect to our own lived experience of place and that of others. We become curious and investigative.

All of these ways of understanding need to be further examined and developed in Stage 2. Each offers opportunities. In Stage 1 we have touched on each of these ways and we have provided an indicative characterisation from a technical analysis.

Specifically we propose that Stage 2 includes the following processes to support understanding.

Analysis of the physical landscape Further analysis of the physical form of Ballarat town and its setting is needed to provide the basis for spatially based planning approaches. Once done, it will provide a point of engagement for the community, and enable the lived experiences of place and the technical analysis to be examined together. We suggest that this analysis examines influencing factors, and includes:

the underlying landscape - geology, landform, natural living systems

the opportunities inherent in that landscape – viewing points, enclosures, ways to cross the landscape (etc)

the sequence and stages in the town’s development – the origins of spatial patterns/urban morphology, built form /townscape, physical links – and how past design, planning and development have used or ignored opportunities offered by the underlying landscape and previous development.

This analysis should include setting Ballarat within its region, historically and today.

To support analysis an interactive digital mapping system could be developed, potentially through a partnership with the University of Ballarat. This would probably need to be a longer-term project, and the work undertaken in Stage 2 could contribute. The opportunity to interrogate existing and newly mapped data through overlays would be exciting for researchers and for the community as a whole. A number of cities have developed web-based mapping systems that allow the community to explore their cities past and present: an example is the Mannahatta project in New York (<http://welikia.org/explore/mannahatta-map/>). Locally,


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GIS-based databases are being used by some communities to record heritage places; these systems include a digital archive of images, video, oral history.

Understanding community ways of seeing and values Through this element of the Stage 2 project, responses to some of the following questions will emerge:

Stories: What are the key defining stories for Ballarat – and for localities within Ballarat?

Traditions: What are the traditions that are particular to Ballarat or parts of the Ballarat community or parts of the Ballarat area – and how do they connect to place?

Use of space and place: How are parts of the city used? How do people respond to and engage with public spaces through daily life?

Perceptions: What are the different ways of seeing / perceiving / reading this landscape or parts of it? What are the stories it evokes? How does it link to a sense of identity and distinctiveness?

Landmarks or signatures: What are the Ballarat or locality-based reference points in daily life? How are they expressed in community identity?

Qualities: What are the qualities of the Ballarat environment that people really respond to: bluestone, weather, beauty, grandeur and scale, sense of history (etc)? What are the unique features and valued character of Ballarat – as a whole and in individual localities?

The community processes selected should be designed to enable people to work together to explore and document their own connections to their locality, to Ballarat town as whole, and the values that arise from their connections. It should not be based on individual responses to a survey: this has already been done in Ballarat Imagine which sets the scene for the more locally-focused work to be done in Stage 2.

In engaging with communities in Stage 2, it will important to acknowledge that:

there are many communities in Ballarat, defined by shared culture, ethnicity, experience, locality, values, interests and more

Ballarat is known and valued by people from outside Ballarat: the wider community – visitors, past residents, people with family connections to Ballarat – and because of Ballarat’s place in Victorian and Australian history, its probably holds values for many Australians.

The approaches should be collaborative and empowering for the communities involved. They should draw on peoples’ experience of place, their community networks, their knowledge and memories, and their shared stories: all these form part of ‘connections’ and sense of identity for communities.

In doing this it will be important to recognise that communities are dynamic. People move in and out of communities and values change over time. While the methods used can only capture a moment in time for a community, they can establish a foundation for future examination of changing values for example.

Undertaking some basic socio-demographic research would help ground the perceptions of today’s communities, highlighting that the profile of a community has changed over say the last 50-60 years (the period of ‘living memory’). Such research may also help reveal how their contemporary sense of identity has been formed.

Community-based cultural mapping using case studies is the preferred approach arising from discussions in Stage 1. The aim would be to develop, test and refine a method or methods with selected communities that could then be applied across the balance of the municipality over time and as resources permit.


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The concept is that three or more case areas would be selected and each would be looked at through the eyes of several different communities. This will enable comparison between areas and highlight different ways of seeing.

the local community: people who live and work in that case study area

Aboriginal traditional owners

a wider community, for example the community of Ballarat.

Selection of the case study areas will require development of criteria to guide the selection. The criteria may include characteristics of the area (e.g. rural - urban; CBD – suburban; newer – older) and community characteristics (e.g. level of engagement with heritage and urban planning; socio-demographic etc). The methods may vary. For example, if a case study area is a central CBD location, the method used might be designed to engage CBD workers at lunchtime on a weekday, using individual survey and mapping techniques rather than a group technique. Conversely, for a residential case study, the methods could involve gathering people together for a walk around their neighbourhood, recording aspects of what they value.

Engaging with the two Aboriginal traditional owner groups - Wadawurrung and the Dja Dja Wurrung – will be important in Stage 2, and initial discussions with both groups indicate that relationships need to be built, protocols and processes agreed. Both are the Registered Aboriginal Party (RAP) for their areas. A valuable starting point could be to identify the issues or triggers around cultural heritage that are not currently part of a local authority's planning or decision making process – in other words, where are the gaps or concerns and how could these be addressed through guidelines, policies and decision-making processes, and especially at early stages in the decision making process, not after key decisions have been made. Enabling effective input is vital and would build the basis for a more collaborative and flexible approach.

A wide variety of approaches are possible, and there are already interesting examples in Ballarat and elsewhere. For example, the City of Ballarat’s community photographic project Ballarat through my eyes is a way of exploring particular ways of seeing and communicating what Ballarat people value. The Peel Street Story presents people’s connections to Peel Street through memories triggered by revisiting the place; it illustrates the links between tangible places and identity (http://www.ballarat.vic.gov.au/pbs/heritage/heritage-project-and-studies/peel-street.aspx ). Another approach is revealed in the Bostonography website, described by its creators as ‘a site for interesting visual representations of life and land in Greater Boston’ that ‘exposes and explores the geographical sense of place in the city’. Through their own mapping and by ‘crowdsourcing’ community views, they have created a series of interesting maps covering a diversity of aspects of Boston from the origin of street names to the defining of neighbourhood boundaries (<http://bostonography.com/2013/neighborhoods-as-seen-by-the-people/>).

The City of Ballarat is keen to work collaboratively with the University of Ballarat to capture and map findings from the Stage 2 study, and over time to build interactive and creative ways to examine the landscape of the municipality and its diverse meanings to the communities of Ballarat.

In engaging with the communities, it will be important to look for shared stories, allowing time and space for expressions of ‘our stories’, ‘our identities’ and ‘our values’ to emerge.

5.3.4 Pressures A third element in Stage 2 is understanding the pressures on the urban landscape. Some of these are internal and some external, and they are inevitably a combination of social, economic and environmental factors.

The Ballarat Strategy is already well underway and its remit includes understanding these pressures.


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Change is often felt as something to be feared, especially those changes over which we have no control or influence. This part of the project would aim to understand the issues and concerns associated with change, the potential for community empowerment around change and how the City of Ballarat might act to create the future its community is seeking. Some of the work in Ballarat Imagine will be directly relevant here.

To help understand the pressures on the City of Ballarat, we might ask:

What are the trends and change factors? Which are within our control or influence, and which are not (such as broader economic factor or climate change for example)?

What are the issues and concerns, particularly when faced with the facts about trends and change factors?

How does the community see change? Is it all negative?

Analysis of the pressures on the urban landscape will need to take a long-term view. Experts on significant external issues such as climate change may need to be engaged. The Ballarat Strategy will provide an important framework, and will need to be considered alongside State and commonwealth government policies. Community perspectives on issues and impacts will need to be engaged with.

5.3.5 Directions Already emerging from the Ballarat Strategy are key principles which together express a vision for the future – the future that Ballarat wants to achieve for all of its communities. Vision implies leadership. It frames the future as a destination to be reached, not an impact to be suffered.

From the perspective of the City of Ballarat, how willing is Ballarat to lead, and what framework is in place to deliver leadership and management? What are the opportunities for collaboration with the community?

At the most practical level it will be important to examine the tools that the City of Ballarat has to work with. For example, Stage 2 could examine:

What tools do we have access to now? And are they effective in addressing current issues? Will they remain effective into the future given changing pressures?

Are there other tools that exist that are not being used?

Are there new tools that could be developed?

An example of a new tool would be a skyline policy or control, and example of a tool that exists but is not being used is the 3D modelling of part of the CBD, a valuable tool to assess the impact of development proposals on critical viewlines.

Some tools may need to be renewed or reshaped to meet changing circumstances: for example, a review of the Planning Scheme is a likely outcome along with new policies and guidelines on a diverse range of topics. This may stretch the ways we think about urban planning, about heritage and about how to collaborate with communities.

In Stage 2, workshops with Council officers would be designed to evaluate tools in hand, and a wider symposium of planners, urban designers, community facilitators and others could explore the potential of new tools and ideas.

Not all of the tools that the City of Ballarat will need to implement a HUL approach can be developed and delivered in Stage 2. This will happen progressively over time; Stage 2 should outline these tools in an implementation plan or series of recommendations.

Nor will all the tools be ‘spatial planning’ as these alone cannot deliver HUL. Other tools will be needed - financial/economic, cultural, social, sustainability – and this is one of the challenges posed by the comprehensive and wide-reaching nature of the HUL approach.


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5.4 Delivering the HUL approach The HUL approach will take time to be delivered. It will need ongoing activities designed to build new ways of working. A few specific ideas arising from Stage 1 are below, and it is expected that more will emerge from Stage 2.

5.4.1 Resourcing and relationships Delivering a new and paradigm shifting approach will require:

engagement across the City of Ballarat as an organisation

partnerships between the City of Ballarat and other key players (for example, other management authorities)

resources

excellent communication

a strong relationship of trust between the community, the City of Ballarat, other key players.

Stage 2 should include examination of relationships, collaborative processes and consensus building opportunities that can support such a significant paradigm shift. Further, Stage 2 should embed these concepts into its approach. For example what processes can be used to engage all key parts of the City of Ballarat as an organisation in Stage 2?

5.4.2 Keeping everyone informed and involved One interesting low-cost possibility for the Stage 2 project is to create a web-based hub of information and perspectives, including reporting in on the different community projects.

5.4.3 What will the outcomes of Stage 2 look like? It is not possible to specify the outcomes yet. But it is clear that the outcomes will need to be accessible and available. The HUL approach is based on influencing everyone – changing the way the city is seen, valued and managed. The outcomes therefore need to be available, easy to understand and interpret.

Second, the outcomes need to be practical and useable, recognising the many purposes to which they will be put.

Third, they should be adaptable and encourage further development and innovation. They are not end points – they are a step along a new path.

5.5 In summary In summary, Stage 2 will need to include:

1. Definition of the study area, recommended as being Ballarat township and its setting

2. An agreed community engagement approach, and a strategy for engagement

3. A communications plan

4. A project governance and guidance framework – governance being a project steering committee and guidance being through a more widely based reference group/or forum with project partners, community representatives and relevant experts

5. A HUL goal setting process – building on the Ballarat Strategy and engaging the City of Ballarat (elected members and officers) and the community

6. Initiation of a digital mapping system, probably as a separate project but clearly aligned to meet the needs of the HUL approach. It should be designed as a central repository of fact-based layers of data and scalable historical maps to enable layering. It would need to be able to access State government data sets as well as Council data.


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7. A structured analysis of the landscape of today, closely integrating technical and community-based definitions of their landscapes – qualities, meanings and values. This would involve:

a. Interrogation of existing heritage studies, reports and histories to more clearly understand the evolution of the historic landscape and where the evidence of the past is revealed in the landscape today

b. Aboriginal cultural mapping working with Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung representatives to map their readings of the landscape of the study area; this will require development of agreed protocols and processes and will need funding to enable each organisation to contribute

c. Local community mapping, probably based on several case study areas initially, rather than the whole study area, and considering the results of the indicative characterisation developed in Stage 1

d. Mapping in response to tasks (a), (b) and (c): this may involve the development of new maps or other digital media designed to communicate the values embodied in the landscape from community and technical perspectives

8. Analysis of the pressures on the urban landscape through a combination of technical review, input from the Ballarat Strategy team and a community-based process. Issues or discussion papers may be required to enable the community to contribute effectively; this may already be part of the Ballarat Strategy.

9. Setting directions will involve significant internal engagement by the City of Ballarat to discuss the topics of leadership, partnership and active community collaboration. This means examining relationships and establishing models of collaboration.

10. A practical tasks will be the evaluation of tools suited to delivering the HUL approach: this will involve analysis of existing tools and their effectiveness combined with research into other possibilities. Some of this analysis should be undertaken by City of Ballarat officers as they are most familiar with the current suite of tools and how they are used. A symposium to explore potential tools is proposed, and would provide a good follow-up to the Stage 1 symposium.

11. Stage 2 would result in a HUL Implementation Strategy, documenting the outcomes of Stage 2, setting directions for the future development and implementation of the HUL approach and making recommendations about specific studies or actions arising from Stage 2.


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REFERENCES The key sources used and the location of significant resources for Stage 2 are noted here.

References consulted in Stage 1 Maps and plans Plan of the township of Ballarat 1858 (1858_002_S)

Geology map 1858 (1858_013_01_L)

Mining District of Ballarat 1859 (1859 _006_02_L)

John L. Ross Map of Ballarat and Sebastopol (showing gold leads)1868 (1868_011_L)

Published sources Australian Heritage Commission, 2001 Australian historic themes: a framework for use in heritage assessment and management, The Commission, Canberra.

Bate, W. 1978 Lucky city: the first generation at Ballarat, 1851-1901, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South.

Bate, W. 1993 Life after gold: twentieth-century Ballarat, Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, Carlton.

Australia ICOMOS, 1979 Burra Charter 1979.

City of Ballarat, 2009 City of Ballarat Cultural Diversity Strategy 2009-14.

City of Ballarat, 2013 Community Profile for the City of Ballarat.

Freestone, R., 2010. Urban Nation: Australia's Planning Heritage, CSIRO Publishing in association with the Dept. of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, and the Australian Heritage Council.

Heritage Council (Vic.) 2010. Victoria's framework of historical themes, Heritage Council of Victoria, Melbourne.

Jacobs, W., Lewis, N. & E Vines, 1981 Ballarat conservation guidelines, Jacobs Lewis Vines, South Yarra, 1981.

Jacobs, W., Lewis, N. & E Vines, 1981 Ballarat: A guide to Buildings and areas 1851 - 1940, Jacobs Lewis Vines, South Yarra.

Land Conservation Council Victoria, 1980, Report on Ballarat Area, LCCV Melbourne.

O’Donnell, P. M. & Turner, M. 2012 ‘The Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation: A New UNESCO Tool for a Sustainable Future’, IFLA Congress Cape Town, 8 < <http://www.heritagelandscapes.com/SiteImages/IFLA-Cape%20Town-HUL%20ODonnell-Turner%2028July2012(1).pdf>

Sonkoly, Gabor 2011 Historic urban landscape – a conceptual analysis, in Városmegújítás. Urban renewal, BME Urbanisztikai Tanszék, 2011: 92-101. Version consulted is an 8 page web download <http://www.academia.edu/1184490/Historic_Urban_Landscape_-A_Conceptual_Analysis> and the page numbers given refer to those in the downloaded document not the original journal pagination.

Swanwick, C., Dept. of Landscape University of Sheffield, Land Use Consultants, 2002, Landscape Character Assessment Guidance for England and Scotland, The Countryside Agency & Scottish Natural Heritage.

UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape adopted on 10 November 2011

Van Oers, R. 2013 ‘Road Map for application of the HUL approach in China’, Journal of cultural heritage management and sustainable development, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp. 4-17.


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Van Oers, Ron 2012 Managing cities and the historic urban landscape initiative : an introduction, Paris, UNESCO, 2010. p. 7-17 (eng) (World Heritage Papers. 27).

Venice Charter 1964 , ICOMOS.

Unpublished sources Allom Lovell and Assoc., 1999, Camp Street Precinct Ballarat Conservation Management Plan, City of Ballarat.

Centre for Environmental Management, University of Ballarat, 2005, Native Vegetation Mapping and Review of the Vegetation Protection Overlay (VPO1), City of Ballarat.

City of Ballarat, 2013 ‘Analysis of Ballarat Imagine (Internal confidential document)’.

City of Ballarat, 2013, Ballarat Imagine, part of Today Tomorrow Together: The Ballarat Strategy.

City of Ballarat, Today Tomorrow Together: The Ballarat Strategy.

Clinch, R. J. 2012 ‘The places we keep: the heritage studies of Victoria and outcomes for urban planners’ PhD dissertation, Faculty of Architecture, Building & Planning, The University of Melbourne.

Context Pty Ltd, 2011. ‘Sebastopol Heritage Study (Stage 2)’, report prepared for City of Ballarat.

Cooke, S., 2013Cultural Landscapes and the Historic Urban Landscape, unpublished discussion paper prepared for the project ‘brains trust’ group.

Hansen Partnership, Jan Penney & Wendy Jacobs, 2003. ‘Ballarat Heritage Study (Stage 2)’, report prepared for City of Ballarat.

Heritage and Environment Unit, 1983, Ballarat Area Strategy Plan Task II in Heritage: Issues Paper, Department of Planning.

HERMES Database: various citations for places in Ballarat.

Jacobs, W., Lewis, N. & E Vines, 1978 ‘Ballarat Conservation Study’, Historic Buildings Conservation Council & Australian Heritage Council, Ballarat.

Jacobs, W., Lewis, N. & E Vines, 1980 ‘Historic sites survey Ballarat study area: final report’, report to the Land Conservation Council by Jacobs Lewis Vines, South Yarra, 1980.

Lumley P., Dyke J., Spencer R., Almond E., 1983, Ballarat Historic Landscapes, Trees and Gardens, Royal Botanic Gardens, Dept. of Crown Lands and Survey.

Planisphere, 2013 South West Victoria Landscape Assessment Study. Draft report.

Rowe, D. Jacobs W & S Zada, 2006 ‘Ballarat Heritage Precincts Study - Part A - Report and Recommendations’, City of Ballarat, Ballarat.

SKM, 2007, Analysis of the Value of Heritage to the City of Ballarat, City of Ballarat.

Ward, A., 1998 ‘Ballarat Heritage Review 1998: (Stage One)’. Report prepared for the City of Ballarat.

Websites Sovereign Hill <www.sovereignhill.com.au/gold-museum-ballarat/>

Gold museum <www.goldmuseum.com.au/explore-collection/>

Victoria’s Bioregions <http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/conservation-and-environment/native-vegetation-groups-for-victoria/victorias-bioregions#vvp> accessed 28 July 2013.


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Resources for Stage 2 Sources of historic maps and other data that could be interrogated further in Stage 2 are listed below:

PROV A wealth of maps and documents are held at their main office in North Melbourne and at their regional office in Ballarat. Main sources include:

VPRS 4771 Township plans of Ballarat and Ballarat East

VPRS 6420 Agricultural and Township plans for the Central Highlands

VPRS 8168 Historic Plan Collection.

Gold Museum The Gold Museum at Sovereign Hill has an extensive collection of early maps and detailed plans which are in the process of being digitised and put online. This should be completed by the end of August and available for Stage 2. They include historic maps for the wider municipality as well as the mining operations close to Ballarat.

City of Ballarat Record Office The City of Ballarat has a digitised map collection 1856 – 1966 from a collection held in the Town Hall and it would be worth further investigation in Stage 2.

Art Gallery of Ballarat In addition, the Art Gallery of Ballarat have in their collection a number of important early paintings and illustrations that show the massive changes in the landscape. They have expressed an interest in contributing to the historic time depth analysis in Stage 2.

University of Ballarat The Geoffrey Blainey Record Centre of the University of Ballarat have been working on a draft interactive mapping site which will provide a series of historic maps that can be overlaid on the current map of the urban core area. As these resources are developed, it would be useful to consult with them for Stage 2.


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APPENDIX 1: FIELD RECORD SHEET


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APPENDIX 2: THEMATIC ANALYSIS The following sources were used in preparing this analysis:

Australian Heritage Commission, 2001 Australian historic themes: a framework for use in heritage assessment and management, The Commission, Canberra.

Bate, W. 1978 Lucky city: the first generation at Ballarat, 1851-1901, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South.

Bate, W. 1993 Life after gold: twentieth-century Ballarat, Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, Carlton.

City of Ballarat, Today Tomorrow Together: The Ballarat Strategy.

City of Ballarat, 2013, Ballarat Imagine, part of Today Tomorrow Together: The Ballarat Strategy.

Freestone, R., 2010. Urban Nation: Australia's Planning Heritage, CSIRO Publishing in association with the Dept. of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, and the Australian Heritage Council.

Heritage Council (Vic.) 2010. Victoria's framework of historical themes, Heritage Council of Victoria, Melbourne.

Jacobs, W., Lewis, N. & E Vines, 1981 Ballarat conservation guidelines, Jacobs Lewis Vines, South Yarra, 1981.

Jacobs, W., Lewis, N. & E Vines, 1981 Ballarat: A guide to Buildings and areas 1851 - 1940, Jacobs Lewis Vines, South Yarra.

Jacobs, W., Lewis, N. & E Vines, 1978 ‘Ballarat Conservation Study’, Historic Buildings Conservation Council & Australian Heritage Council, Ballarat.

Jacobs, W., Lewis, N. & E Vines, 1980 ‘Historic sites survey Ballarat study area: final report’, report to the Land Conservation Council by Jacobs Lewis Vines, South Yarra, 1980.

Rowe, D. Jacobs W & S Zada, 2006 ‘Ballarat Heritage Precincts Study - Part A - Report and Recommendations’, City of Ballarat, Ballarat.

Ward, A., 1998 ‘Ballarat Heritage Review 1998: (Stage One)’. Report prepared for the City of Ballarat.


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National Theme Group

National Theme National Subthemes

Associated Victorian Theme

Associated Victorian Subtheme

Evidence, examples and relevant periods

Tracing the evolution of the Australian environment

1.3 Assessing scientifically diverse environments

1.Shaping Victoria’s environment

1.4 Creation stories and defining country

Traditional country of Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung for millennia

Mt Buninyong, Mount Warrenheip, Mount Bolton, Lake Wendouree and Lake Burrumbeet

Topographical change

1.3 Understanding scientifically diverse environments

Alluvial flats, basaltic plains, volcanic cones – auriferous landscape potential

Ballarat’s unique geomorphology led to the deposits of Gold in the alluvial soil adjacent to creeks and rivers, the subsurface deposits in ancient river beds below basaltic lava flows and the gold held in quartz seams far underground.

Peopling Australia

2.1 Living as Australia’s earliest inhabitants

2. Peopling Victoria’s places and landscapes

2.1 Living as Victoria’s original inhabitants

Traditional country of Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung

Deep time

Contact and conflict

Colonial impacts

Topographical change

Regaining country and recognition of ownership

2.4 Migrating 2.4.2 Migrating to seek opportunity

Migrating to seek opportunity on the goldfields or to seek pastoral lands

Chasing the leads – Eureka, Canadian, White Horse, Magpie and Cobblers

Migrating to utilize specialist skills – Cornish mine technology in demand to undertake deep lead mining and penetrate basalt plain west of the city.

First wave of migrants seeking opportunity on goldfields - Some skills and experience, but mainly unskilled men of all ages and nationalities - Asian, European, Americas and the Celts –Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish – attracted to the ‘easy pickings’ of the alluvial mining.

Second stage – below ground – migration primarily by skilled workforce with previous experience – generally the Cornish, Welsh – experienced


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and able to transfer skills and techniques to the local condition, respected in the mining community for their expertise.

2.5 Migrating and making a home

First discoveries – Golden Point, Brownbills Little Bendigo, Buninyong Creek

Main Street Ballarat East* rapid establishment and consolidation of commercial enterprise amongst working mines and diggings ‘heyday’

Pastoral properties ‘runs’ established as permanent settlements late 1830s-early 1840s.

Land Selection Acts of 1860s allowed the pastoral lands to be ‘unlocked’ and numerous small farming enterprises developed around Ballarat, servicing and supplying the goldfields.

Consolidation of farming enterprises to supply food and materials to the Goldfields

Learmonth township begins 1860s

Buninyong Township (pre-1851, surveyed 1851) established

Many unsuccessful miners quickly re-established as trades or commercial ventures from late 1850s onwards

2.6 Maintaining distinctive cultures

Establishing settlements of miners based on common culture – Irish Town, Chinaman Flat, Canadian, Cornish Row.

Formation and consolidation and expansion of cultural groups associated with mining activity – particularly Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Chinese and Irish miner groups.

Forming associations after migration to escape hardship/persecution (i.e. Polish society).

Mainly Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, English and Chinese immigrants remained in Ballarat post alluvial ‘rush’.

Unskilled workers diversified into other pursuits within the township, whereas skilled migrants remained in the mines.

Ballarat’s city centre layout, form, engineering heritage, religious institutions and plan is primarily influenced by the Celtic population


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who remained. Chinese culture and heritage is surprisingly limited considering the importance of this cultural group to the development of mining in the mid nineteenth century.

Cornish migrants are highly important for the cultural legacy they created. The Cornish Jacks were heavily relied on by the mining industry and the independent system of tributing (co-operative shared manner of working) was adopted as an important part of Ballarat’s mining heritage. Cornish Wesleyans and Methodists – churches everywhere.

Welsh miners custom of eisteddfod (musical and singing contests) led to the development of Royal Street South competitions, debating societies and a quest for knowledge leading to the establishment of various educational institutions for which Ballarat is famous.

Migrant heritage reflected in place names.

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: the Aboriginal Centre; Harmony Festival; Community acceptance of diversity; Multicultural diversity.

2.7 Promoting settlement

Establishment and survey of numerous small towns surrounding Ballarat including:

Burrumbeet, Warrenheip (agricultural settlements);

Durham Lead, Sebastopol (gold settlements).

2.8 Fighting for identity

Local theme – displacement, contact and conflict.

Developing Australia’s local, regional and national economies

3.3 Surveying the continent

3.3.2 Looking for overland stock routes

3. Connecting Victorian’s by transport and communications

3.1 Establishing pathways

Following Aboriginal pathways

Developing stock routes (Sturt Street, Glenelg Highway, Midland Hwy).

The earliest roads traced the movement of squatters and their flocks as they moved to market or brought produce and materials back to their stations from the growing townships of Geelong and Melbourne.

The very first road was the three-chain wide stock route that connected Geelong and Adelaide and was the precursor to Sturt Street.


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Establishing routes between cities, towns, ports and goldfields (1851-56).

Developing routes and tracks through the diggings – Main Road, others (1851 -1870);

The Geelong-Buninyong route was well travelled and was preferable to the more difficult Melbourne Road that covered rougher ground and crossed the Bullarook and Wombat Forests. The main Geelong route extended north to stations further out at Smeaton and Clunes or west towards the more remote plains. These same routes were later used by miners and others attracted to the goldfields bringing more traffic and forcing the development of local road boards.

3.4 Utilising natural resources

3.4.3 Mining 4. Transforming and managing the land

4.5 Gold mining Discovery of Gold in Ballarat1851, Buninyong and Poverty Point.

Alluvial mining, deep lead mining, quartz mining.

Eureka Stockade and uprising*.

New technologies and methods of mining developed locally.

Ballarat is different to most gold towns in that the gold rush lasted for decades rather than years.

Diggings established at Golden Point, Brownbills, Little Bendigo, Buninyong Creek - evidence of ground disturbance on Buninyong Creek survives.

Policing the goldfields.

Finding common causes and fighting for miners rights.

Dealing with racism and exclusion (between cultural groups).

Displays of wealth (residential, civic buildings, development of central park in Sturt Street with civic structures).

Establishment of numerous hotels, culture of drinking, entertainment and recreating.

Expansion into deep lead mining – changed the resources, equipment, costs and number of men required to extract gold – led to co-operative groups established.


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Ballarat East goldfields – re-working old mining ground 1860s onwards*.

Increasing deep lead and quartz mining requires more substantial equipment to be manufactured locally to allow fast return.

Living on the diggings – residential dwellings including timber cottages, mine manager’s residences.

Servicing the goldfields.

Supplying water and food to the goldfields.

4.6 Exploiting other mineral, forest and water resources

Exploiting natural resources for building material (timber, earth, water, etc.).

Alluvial mining in watercourses (existing and ancient, underground).

Timber milling industry develops – serving pastoral and mining activities (1851-1856).

Lake Learmonth used for irrigation of intensive crops used to supply goldfields.

Forests harvested for timbers to support mines.

Development of reservoirs – White Swan, Gong Gong etc. – supply of water for mining use and for residential drinking water.

3.5 Developing Primary Production

4. Transforming and managing land and natural resources

4.1 Living off the land

Establishment of pastoral ‘runs’

Squatting

Selecting pastoral runs Yuille and Learmonth and other early pastoralists*

Contact and conflict*

Township of Buninyong surveyed and established*

Development of quartz crushing stamp head machinery

First European ‘squatters’ establishing claims to pastoral lands

Yuille brothers, Learmonth brothers arrived in the region 1837 seeking lands to graze sheep.

The Yuille family, Scottish settlers Archibald Buchanan Yuille and his


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brother William Cross Yuille arrived in 1837 and squatted on 10,000-acre (40 km2) sheep run.

The first houses were built near Woolshed Creek by William Yuille and Anderson (Sebastopol), while Archibald Yuille erected a hut Black Swamp (Lake Wendouree) in 1838.

Somerville and Thomas Learmonth

Winter

4.3 Grazing and raising livestock

Making property boundaries and animal fences with hedgerows, markers, landforms.

Barns and farm buildings, woolsheds, races, yards.

Pattern of pastoral landscape.

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Country identity

3.8 Moving goods and people

3. Connecting Victorians by transport and communications

3.3 Linking Victorians by rail

Railway arrives in Ballarat 1862 [Geelong-Ballarat line]

Rail network rapidly expanded from Ballarat

Ballarat Railway Station built 186?

Importance of rail is based on in Ballarat is lines of communication and transport it allowed and received, but the infrastructure it caused to develop which built upon the unique skills of mining industry

Ballarat becomes a centralised hub for regional rail

Ballarat West (?) workshops [rail]

Advent of rail transforms capabilities of mining, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism and commerce

Rail arrived 1862 linking Ballarat to Geelong – largest railway complex built during rail expansion, indicates the importance of gold to Ballarat and Victoria

Tracks quickly spread out and made Ballarat a hub rail centre. Lines to Creswick, Ararat, Stawell, Wimmera, Adelaide, Scarsdale, Haddon, Smythesdale.

Lines built through Ballan to Melbourne with special purpose built lines


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to the Saleyards and the Racecourse

Main rail line divides Ballarat into North and South, and is a strong visual element in the landscape of the city

Northern and Western lines brought wool and wheat as well as allowing the foundries and skilled metal industry products to be delivered to mines.

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Public transport (trains)

3.4 Linking Victorians by road in the 20th century

Re-development of former residential areas on principal routes [gateways to the city] as car-dealerships

Expansion of single and double lane roads into multiple lanes – altering the urban form

De-centralisation of late 20th Century retail into shopping centres/bulky goods commerce buildings

Developing authorities to manage roads and tollways

Establishment of small towns on transport routes (wayside places).

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Accessibility – easy to get around; Public transport (bus)

3.5 Travelling by tram

Tramline developed to access Lake Wendouree 1880s (?)

Tramline expanded in an attempt to encourage commuter traffic on trams mid-20th Century – associated with the post war development around Lake Wendouree etc.

3.6 Linking Victorians by Air

In 1930, Ballarat Airport was established. During World War II an expanded Ballarat airport was the base of the RAAF Wireless Air Gunners' School as well as the base for USAAF Liberator bomber squadrons.

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Ballarat airport

3.9 Farming for commercial profit


4.4 Farming

Pastoral landscapes created – deforestation and division of land into parcels.

Later, in the more densely populated areas after the 1865 Selection Acts forced the subdivision of large station runs, the characteristic grid


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pattern developed, crisscrossing the landscape and carving the land up into neat and tidy square parcels. Oblong blocks of 80 acres were most common with roads on a north-south and east west axis giving the area a regular appearance that was further enhanced by the planting of hawthorn and gorse hedges or cypress windbreaks. The rich volcanic soils in the open areas of the Ballarat West, Bonshaw, Learmonth *****others (?) region could carry closer settlement, unlike the forest areas of Invermay and Haddon for instance, and these sections were soon intensely farmed. Townships grew up along these straight and clearly defined roads, often spaced at regular intervals that were determined by how far a man or horse and cart could travel in a day

Exploiting natural resources for building material

Numerous squatting runs established post 1850 around Ballarat, which profited from the supply of food and goods to the miners in the goldfields at Ballarat, Clunes, Buninyong and other areas. The Land Selection Acts 1854 saw the land opened up to former miners and others, who were able to take up land under a primitive type of closer settlement arrangement, where they were able to engage in intensive farming practise on smaller acreage to continue the supply of fresh food and goods to the growing market of the Ballarat and surrounding goldfields. The Hay and Corn market 1859, the Saleyards, slaughter house and bone mills (Creswick Road), Flour and Grain Mills at Buninyong, Learmonth, Blowhard, Burrumbeet, and Ballarat.

Smaller intensive farms developed north of the city to supply fresh produce to goldfields (1856-1862)

3.11 Altering the environment


4.7 Transforming the land and waterways

Earth disturbance – mullock heaps, shafts, clay to the surface

Sludge pits

Slurry pits and dams

Changing the course of the Yarrowee River

Changing the flow, route and course of natural water courses through the city through engineering

Altering the landscape permanently


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Denudation of all vegetation in diggings or deep lead mine areas

Changing residential environment caused by arrival-departure of canvas tents, timber buildings (relocatable),

Creation of mullock heaps, removal of mullock heaps, integration of mullock heaps into the fabric of the city

Erosion to hills and valleys caused by pastoral and mining activities

Sullying natural water bodies through mining activities

Loss of flora and fauna

3.13 Developing an Australian manufacturing capacity

5. Building Victoria’s industries and workforce

5.1 Processing raw materials

Woollen Mill - The Ballarat Woollen Mill was able to use local wool to produce a marketable product and other industries such s fell mongering and tanneries, bacon factories traded off the livestock market.

The local boot and shoe trade ran a number of factories which had a ready market in people requiring sturdy work shoes and had access to locally tanned leather from Wendouree and Buninyong. F

Flour mills essential to the growing bakery trade as people turned to cheap commercially made bread

Timber saw mills

Malting works, Gregory Street, Lake Wendouree

3.13 Developing an Australian manufacturing capacity

5.2 Developing a manufacturing capacity

First foundries established to manufacture equipment for agricultural and mining needs (c1852)

Developing a construction and manufacturing industry for steam engines used Australia wide (1862-1950)

Phoenix foundry established - built steam engines based on their ability to manufacture steam boilers and engines for the mines, and had a growing capacity to repair and re-build trains in the Ballarat Workshops. Ballarat Built Phoenix steam engines were used across railways of Australia from 1883. Other industries, linked to supplying the Phoenix foundry were supported by this success.

Brickworks

Residential cast iron foundries established to supply cast iron lace,


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decorative columns, door handles, etc.

Development of other industries

Foundries established– farm implements, mining tools etc. develop 1856-62

Pottery factory in Creswick Road 1850s

Brick making factory Ballarat West (Selkirks)

Brick making factories at Ballarat East (Hoffmans)

Steam boiler industry developed 1856-76 Ballarat East Brickworks at Black Hill 1860s-1930. Industry utilized the clay generated through mining in Ballarat East diggings. Bricks used extensively in industrial buildings, residential buildings, civic buildings.

Cordial factories

Breweries

Metalworking industries of Ballarat were instrumental in the development of the mining industry and were responsive to mining requirements and demands. Access to firms able to repair and build the required machinery quickly and efficiently helped Ballarat extract gold at a competitive rate. Others, like the Phoenix Foundry, diversified into the railway business when mining demands began to drop.

Manufactured drinks

Mining dams such as Kirks Dam and others were built to provide water for miner’s needs but these depleted the overall water supply available and limited access to drinking water. Quickly dirtied by sludge and debris, the creeks could not supply clean drinking water and the resultant diseases encouraged the miners to turn to safer bottled drinks such as soda water, lemonade and beer sparking a strong beverage industry in Ballarat. Water Boards were set up in the early 1860s to provide safe and secure supplies and the building of reservoirs such as the White Swan Reservoir was a natural result.

McKay Harvester Works

Where the Sunshine Harvester was produced originally?


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Mining materials and requirements

A number of innovative firms such as the Soho Foundry, Nettle’s Foundry, Grenville Foundry and others competed to supply the myriad of mining requirements for tools, parts, engines and boilers and some specialised as a result

Pumps and Windmills: Bromleys, Trahar and Abrahams, specialised in pumps and windmills,

Agricultural implements such as Kelly & Preston or Munros at Alfredton in agricultural implements. Tynans kept the plough equipment business mostly under their control

Steam Engines: Phoenix foundry – built steam engines based on their ability to manufacture steam boilers and engines for the mines, and had a growing capacity to repair and re-build trains in the Ballarat Workshops. Ballarat Built Phoenix steam engines were used across railways of Australia from 1883. Other industries, linked to supplying the Phoenix foundry were supported by this success.

Ballarat Railway Workshops remained the most important heavy industry in the 1950s

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Employment opportunities

3.19 Marketing and retailing

5.3 Marketing and Retailing

Development of commercial centre

Bakery Hill is the earliest commercial retail area in Ballarat. The precinct in that area was the narrow pivotal meeting point in the 1850s between Main Road and the chaotic alluvial mining and commercial centre which spread over Ballarat Flats, Yarrowee Creek and Golden Point and the official government township surveyed in 1851 and the police camp on the high basalt escarpment overlooking Yarrrowee River to the west. There is a group of very early 1850s/1860s shops which are rare examples of their type in the precinct.

Haymarket

Saleyards

Travelling sales?

Bridge Mall


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Decentralisation of bulky goods, supermarkets etc.

New Growth areas have centralised services for marketing and retailing

3.26 Providing health services

8 Building Community Life

8.3 Providing health and welfare services

Welfare provided to those on the goldfields, particularly wives and children of men who had lost their lives.

Orphanage

Boys Home

Providing public and private health care

Providing services to regional Victoria

Receiving health and welfare services

Ballarat Base Hospital

St John of God Hospital

Maternal and Child Health Services and buildings

Asylum

Women’s Refuge

Strong tradition of support for charitable institutions also grew. In the absence of a fully developed local government system, prominent citizens gathered into groups to support whatever charitable organization they thought their society needed. These included hospitals, asylums, orphanages, and homes for the poor and refuges and several had the same people on their board at the time of establishment reflecting the generous and pious nature of some of Ballarat’s most important people.

West Ballarat Heritage Precinct contains an excellent collection of denominational buildings and institutions

Like many mining areas Ballarat’s population included those who had not benefited from the wealth accumulated by others. The poor and destitute included widows and children who had lost their breadwinner in mining accidents or through disease, families deserted by their menfolk who had travelled on to other strikes, men unable to work or women in ill health and orphans. 55


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Various religious bodies began their charity work often in an informal way and supported by local well-meaning and wealthy individuals, but as the population grew so quickly, Ballarat soon needed to develop a more institutionalised approach. Most institutions began by these original citizens forming into dedicated committees who soon developed guidelines and sought more formal funding arrangements than individual donations. The need to establish a dedicated building was usually the first stimulus required to bring such charities into a more prescribed agreement, such as building the Ballarat Orphanage or the Women’s Refuge.

Ballarat has two prominent hospitals, Ballarat Base Hospital and St John of God Hospital, as well as all the ancillary services such major health care providers require. During the gold rushes the Government Camp served as a medial centre but few other than officers would have been attended to. Those wounded at the Eureka Stockade battle in 1854 received varying attention and the need for a hospital became apparent. A year later building works began and the hospital has grown into a strong and vibrant centre of the medical community. The St John of God Hospital on an adjacent site was built by the Catholic fraternity and shares some services with the Base Hospital. (not particularly unique)

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Health services; Hospitals and specialists; Medical services Ballarat base hospital

Building settlements, towns and cities

4.1 Planning Urban settlements

4.1.5 Developing City centres

6.Building towns, cities and the garden state

6.4 Making regional centres

Creation of grand Sturt Street Boulevard

Central linear park with expressions of civic pride (statuary, sanctuary, structures, trees, buildings)

Expression of Empire – streetscape, names, statuary, Avenue of Honour, gothic and Victorian architecture

Division between Ballarat East and Ballarat West was defined in the 1852 at first survey plan of Ballarat East and Ballarat West.

Ballarat East was one of the first ‘diggings’ areas and dwellings and commercial enterprises were clustered along the Main Road among the mines. The Survey of Ballarat East confirms the unruly and jumbled


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settlement patterns in place in the area in 1851 rather than imposing the typical grid on top of the landform.

Ballarat East residents and commercial property owners had positioned themselves around the mines and associated activities wherever they could find a space. The W.S. Urqhuart government survey of 1851 had made no provision for streets in East Ballarat as many buildings were already in situ, so later occupiers had simply placed their buildings wherever a clear space was available. Rather than try to impose the favoured grid pattern when later official surveys took place, the government surveyors simply measured what was there in 1857 and offered secure ownership of the occupied sites to the current residents. Ballarat West was relatively undeveloped in 1851, and the survey plan dated 1852 by Urquhart responded to this by imposing order over the landscape by the laying out of large blocks along straight wide streets. The plan for West Ballarat, located on the escarpment features Sturt Street as the backbone of the plan, with the dimensions of a classical Boulevard, complete with a central linear park, now celebrated as one of the most important design features of the town plan. The major cross street was Lydiard Street, containing the Government Camp and other public buildings. Lydiart St was some little distance from the diggings, allowing for a mix of social, legal and religious buildings.

Grand public buildings, large hotels and large residences were erected in Ballarat West from the 1850s, but principally the grand buildings date from the 1860s and 1870s.

The survey was quickly expanded as the demand for residential land increased. Miners preferred to live close to their work and by the late 1850s small timber cottages in the area south of Dana Street housed numerous miners and their families, with the cheap and available land encouraging a high rate of home ownership. A further boom in the 1870s led to another spurt in the development of roads in West Ballarat by government survey.

The social differences between East and West Ballarat was typified by


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their respective street layouts, the methodical orderliness of the West and the chaotic arrangements of the East reflected the social aspirations of those who lived and worked away from the rough mining world in the western end of town and those who lived and worked in the middle of the noise and dirt in the east. As the mining activity spread following the leads it further disrupted the eastern area encouraging many businesses to move to the more stable western sector where the rail station acted as a hub.

Ballarat West initially attracted those who required more space for business or residences than in Ballarat East.

Ballarat East retained its air of working class throughout while Ballarat West began a period of consolidation and public beautification works from the 1880s onwards leaving a legacy of fine buildings and splendid public spaces.

Clustering of trades (lawyers around the court house and police station), Warehouses around the railway station, Banks on major thoroughfares, industrial complexes in Doveton and Armstrong Street

Establishing a regional identity

Construction of large permanent buildings, hotels, retail stores, civic buildings, railway station - investment in statements of importance and permanence

Developing the City beautiful

Once Ballarat became a rail head, it was able to utilize the resources and products of manufacturing, mining and pastoral produce to import and export which allowed the township to develop into a regional centre.

Arrival of the railway station consolidated Ballarat as a regional centre

Beatification of streetscapes through planting, statuary, monuments etc.

6.3 Building the suburbs

Many of Ballarat’s ‘suburbs’ are former settlements or towns in their own right, now amalgamated into Ballarat city

Planned suburban development of Ballarat was principally post WW2

In the Post-war era, Ballarat's growth continued. In response to an acute housing shortage, significantly suburban expansion occurred. An


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extensive Housing Commission of Victoria estate was built on the former Ballarat Common (today known as Wendouree West). The estate was originally planned to contain over 750 prefabricated houses. Whilst planning for the estate began in 1949, main construction occurred between 1951 and 1962. During the 1970s a further 300 houses were constructed. Private housing in the adjacent suburb of Wendouree closely matched and eventually eclipsed this by the mid-1960s. The suburb of greater Wendouree and Wendouree West had evolved as the suburban middle-class heart of the city.

Other suburban estate development includes:

- Waller Estate Heritage Precinct

- St Aidan’s Heritage precinct

- Colpin Avenue Heritage Precinct

4.3 Developing institutions

4.5 Making settlements to serve rural Australians

6.5 Living in country towns

Ballarat’s civic centres (Ballarat East, Ballarat West, Buninyong, Learmonth and others) are all located on the highest ground available to command a visual respect and to achieve a sense of dominant scale over the land which it is central to – i.e. Ballarat East overlooks the principal diggings are of Yarrowee Creek., Ballarat West and Sebastopol on the escarpments, Buninyong in its elevated position, Learmonth looks over the Lake and pastoral lands.

Building Parks and Gardens – Lake Wendouree, Botanic Gardens

Later Parks and Gardens created on dis-used mining site

Establishing functional country towns

Many of Ballarat’s present day suburbs are early mining settlements, natural features of the landscape or former townships which have been amalgamated into Ballarat as the city has expanded. The names of these


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localities and suburbs express the rich history of the area, and include evocative names which are related to physical or historical association with the place, such as Canadian, Wendouree, Mount Helen, Eureka and others.

The selection of township sites is linked to the geography and the topography of the district. Early settlement sprung up around river crossings or at the end of a day’s journey along major linking roads, preferably near permanent water.

Later settlements dotted the landscape with schools and post offices located as far apart as a person could travel comfortably on horse or foot.

Some settlements survived, others declined as transport speed increased and larger centres could offer more. Some specialised in offering access to tradesmen who could replace a carriage wheel, shoe a horse and mend a broken plough share but as farming methods changed these needs were no longer required and businesses closed. The simple country store could not compete with larger shopping centres and often only the school building or the hotel remains as reminders of these once busy townships.

The smaller townships like Buninyong and Learmonth established their centres soon after settlement as the suppliers of essential goods and services clustered together to make the most of customers coming in to town or to attract travellers passing through.

After the surveyors had confirmed their presence and allocated land for civic purposes the centres of such townships became publicly recognised. Often the surveyors had made allowances for more future expansion than ever eventuated however the layout of these townships did not alter and the urban pattern remained unchanged. The later arrival of railways and railway stations in some towns drew business away from the former main street but did not really affect the planned layout.

Later, in the more densely populated areas after the 1865 Selection Acts forced the subdivision of large station runs, the characteristic grid pattern developed, crisscrossing the landscape and carving the land up


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into neat and tidy square parcels. Oblong blocks of 80 acres were most common with roads on a north-south and east west axis giving the area a regular appearance that was further enhanced by the planting of hawthorn and gorse hedges or cypress windbreaks. The rich volcanic soils in the open areas of the study region could carry closer settlement, unlike the forest areas of Invermay and Haddon for instance, and these sections were soon intensely farmed.

Townships grew up along these straight and clearly defined roads, often spaced at regular intervals that were determined by how far a man or horse and cart could travel in a day. In west Ballarat on the escarpment, the surveyors laid out the streets and roads in a typical township grid with Sturt Street as the backbone of the plan.

Smaller townships exhibited different street patterns and layout depending on their individual histories. Most attempted to impose the grid pattern where possible, even around obstacles like the Burrumbeet Creek at Miner’s Rest where a square mile survey fitted around the creek. Buninyong grew around the major crossroads, the Geelong-Ballarat main route and the miner’s route to the goldfields, but as development was more sporadic then Ballarat, the buildings were often not erected sequentially. Sebastopol adopted a semi linear development mirroring the underground leads followed by the miners. Learmonth had a semi grid pattern that accommodated easily to the arrival of rail lines as the station could be placed at the edge of the township but close to the central business area.

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Big country town; Close to the bush; Country identity; Affordability Activities for children; Animal friendly; Community involvement – knowing people and working together; Easy to get around; Great place to bring up family; Lifestyle –attractive to families, pace of life; Outdoor activities; Walk to work.

4.6 Remembering significant phases in the development of settlements, cities

6.6 Marking significant phases of development in Victoria’s

Gold Discovery 1851

Loss of industry – Phoenix foundry and Ballarat West workshops

De-centralising industry


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and towns settlements, cities and towns

Arrival of State Government department offices

Alluvial gold

Deep Lead Gold

Quartz gold

Amalgamation of 1994

Amalgamation of East and West Ballarat

Eureka 1854 (Eureka Park)

Gold Bonanza period 1851-1862 (Sovereign Hill replicates this period)

Working 5.1 Working in harsh conditions

5.1.2 Coping with dangerous jobs and workplaces

5. Building Victoria’s industries and workforce

5.8 Working Ballarat is built on industries which involve harsh working conditions, principally engineering, mining and manufacturing

5.6 Entertaining and socialising

1856-62 Huge number of hotels

Proliferation of hotels in Ballarat itself. In the nineteenth century, every third or fourth building was a hotel in the main streets of Ballarat. Often large buildings which catered for all sorts of entertainment and socialising as well as drinking and eating. Particularly large examples had bowling alleys, concert halls, theatres. Dominated streetscape until 1860s. Arrival of the rail in 1862 saw new type of hotel aimed at catering for travellers and a ‘better’ class of people

62-76 Hotels, theatres, development of other social activities

In the smaller settlement towns, hotels provided a major social meeting point for the population. Each town had at least one, and sometimes more, small hotels with accommodation and sometimes even an entertainment space.

•there were two or three hotels at most places. Only Tourello had one, and Coghill.s Creek, with the largest district population (4,000) recorded four. As small farms became unviable and larger farms increased a much smaller workforce was required and this, as well as greater domesticity, brought a quite dramatic reduction in the number of hotels. The fifty of 1865 was reduced to nine in 1891 and three in 1961. Some were converted into private use, but most disappeared along with smithies and other redundant


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businesses in the shrinking townships

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Bike clubs; Community events; Arts and culture; Cycling, rowing; Great day out; Galleries; Markets; Music scene; Nightlife; Walking trails; Royal South Street competitions; Yarrawee Trail and more

5.7 Catering for tourists

Arrival of the railway created new types of accommodation – for rail travellers – including Grant’s Hotel and other large, fine hotels 1870-1900

Lake Wendouree became an important focus for tourism outside of Ballarat (c.?)

Sovereign Hill, established c1967 as a tourist attraction to present a picture of gold mining history, representing the ‘Gold Bonanza’ period 1851-1861

Now considered to be an outstanding outdoor museum, has thrived where others have failed For some visitors Sovereign Hill is history

Ballarat Heritage Week

Ballarat Begonia Festival

Museum of Australian democracy

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Bird world; Kryal Castle; Sovereign Hill; Ballarat Wildlife Park; Tourist Town; Great day out; Heritage and history

Educating 8. Building community life

8.2 Educating people

Ballarat has a long tradition of education – various types of education have been established and celebrated: From the very beginnings of the larger gold rush town of Ballarat its new citizens struggled to form organisations for self-betterment such as Mechanics Institutes, libraries, reading rooms and education for their children.

Sisters of Mercy (Catholic)

Girls - Loreto Sisters (Catholic) also known as St. Mary’ Mount

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: The schools, universities and educational facilities; Ballarat Clarendon College; Pleasant Street Primary School; SMB Campus; University of Ballarat; The Arts


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Academy; Student friendly – supportive; University culture

6.1 Forming Associations, libraries and institutes for self-education

Mechanics Institutes

Free Libraries

Debating Societies

Mechanic’s Institutes – Ballarat, Miner’s Rest, Waubra, Buninyong, Sebastopol, Learmonth others?

Central Library or Free Libraries – Ballarat East Free Library, Ballarat Central Library in Camp Street,

The mechanics institutes associated with the ‘higher learning’ and gentlemanly pursuits in Ballarat, where the free libraries were considered more closely aligned to the values and needs of the working class, miners etc.

6.2 Establishing Schools

Denominational Schools

State, National and Common Schools

Ballarat West Heritage Precinct has a high concentration of fine school buildings

Primary Schools - Tent schools were common during the 1850s and 1860s but were gradually replaced by simple wooden buildings in the outlying suburbs and far grander brick schools in the city itself. Every small suburb or area had a primary school. There were state schools at Addington, Ascot, Bald Hills, Blowhard, Burrumbeet, Cardigan, Coghill.s Creek, Glendaruel, Learmonth, Miner’s Rest, Tourello, Weatherboard, Wendouree and Windermere, where most of them constructed during the burst of activity that followed the advent of state education in 1872.

Secondary Schools – Ballarat (Agricultural) High School - It was founded particularly as a teacher training school but also as an agricultural school training students on its own attached farm. Agriculture was still a prominent industry in the district and its students were of an excellent standard. However the school also provided a general education and facilitated state school students entry into


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University

Denominational Schools – for girls – Clarendon (Presbyterian), Queen’s (Anglican) Boys -Ballarat College (Presbyterian) or Ballarat Grammar (Anglican)

Christian Brothers (Catholic)

Private Boarding School - At nearby Buninyong the Reverend Hastie established the first inland boarding school in 1847

University – University of Ballarat

6.3 Training people for the workplace

Agricultural high school

School of Mines

Professional Education – School of Mines The Ballarat School of Mines, formed to deliver competent and well-educated men with a background in the practical sciences, produced graduates in much demand all over Australia.

Debating societies etc.

6.4 Building a system of higher education

University of Ballarat - The University of Ballarat originated as the Ballarat School of Mines, founded in 1870 and once affiliated with the University of Melbourne

Australian Catholic University – established by the Ballarat Sisters of Mercy 1909

Governing 7.2 Developing institutions of self-government and democracy

7 Governing Victorians

7.1 Developing institutions of self-government and democracy

7.2.2 Struggling for inclusion in the political process

7.2 Struggling for political rights

Eureka uprising

Eureka park

Experiencing exclusion and discrimination

Southern Cross Flag


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7.3 Maintaining Law and Order

Policing Victorians on the Goldfields

Court Houses

Police Stations

7.6 Administering Australia

7.6.1 Developing local government authorities

Developing local roads boards, tollgates and the pre-cursor to local government

Ballarat East Town Hal and Civic centre (former)

Ballarat civic centre

Sebastopol Borough Offices (former)

Buninyong Town Hall and Borough Office (former)

Shire of Ballarat Offices, Learmonth (former)

7.7 Defending Australia

7.7.1 Providing for the common defence

Airport – RAAF training

Troops in Victoria Park

7.7.3 Going to war Drill halls, drill grounds, parade grounds,

7.8 Establishing regional and local identity

There is a strong sense within the community of Ballarat that the city stands independent of the State capital. This has been interpreted as Ballarat “seeing itself as the most important city in Victoria”. This strong sense of identify and self-importance is shaped by its early gold rush history, and the nineteenth century development of unique relationships and networks within Ballarat, between Ballarat and its hinterland (in the regional context) and other major towns and cities in Victoria including Melbourne.

Ballarat’s historic urban core expresses through the fabric (including [but not limited to] architecture, urban design, plantings, statuary and subdivision pattern) its independent wealth and importance. This can be seen as a statement which expresses Ballarat’s independence from Melbourne, and position as a generator of wealth for the State of Victoria and the city of Melbourne.

Empire played a large role in the development of Ballarat’s identity – this incudes the layout and arrangement of Sturt Street, statutes of


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Queen Victoria and King George, street names etc.

Identities developed within the City itself – clear division between communities of Sebastopol, Ballarat East, West Ballarat, other smaller divisions of identity associated with residential locality or ‘stomping ground’. Continues to present day..

Developing Australia’s cultural life

8.1 Organising recreation

8.1.3 Developing public parks and gardens


Development and beautification of parks - Botanic Gardens, Lake Wendouree, Victoria Park and others

Beautification of recreation spaces, such as Lake Burrumbeet and Lake Learmonth

Reclaiming mine sites as parks and gardens (Sebastopol)

8.1.1Playing and watching organised sports

9.1 Participating in sport and recreation

Central Oval and grandstand

Lake Wendouree – Olympics 1956

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Activities for children; Bike clubs; Outdoor activities; Swimming pools; Adventure playground; Canadian River Trail; City Oval; Eureka Pool; Sporting clubs; Skipton rail trail

8.5 Forming Associations

8.5.1 Preserving traditions and group memories

8.5 Preserving traditions and commemorating

Indigenous co-operative established c.1970s

Polish society

Welsh miners – eisteddfod and debating traditions continued to become established annual festival

Historical societies at Buninyong, Sebastopol, Learmonth, others?

Ballarat’s Celtic people remembered their roots through a number of organisations such as the Caledonian Society while other nationalities also gathered into groups with nationalistic ties or religious links. Yet although these groups flourished in the early 1860s and 1870s, and maintained memberships much longer, the ties to other countries and other identities soon faded and the notion of an Australian identity grew stronger. Clubs founded on common interests such as chess or pigeon racing, light aeroplanes or fish protection drew a constant number of members but these groups tended to look towards facilities for meeting


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and shared activities rather than contributing to the identity of a town.

Ballarat was a town redolent in associations and clubs. There was a group for everyone to join and some were very influential in shaping the town. The Ballarat Club, for men only until 1999, was one of the first major clubs and was formed in 1872. Comprised of the most .worthy gentlemen in town, the Club provided a safe haven in which to discuss the prosperity of Ballarat in comfort and to undertake a little business among like-minded people. The Old Colonialists Society, also formed in the booming 1870s, still meets regularly and hosts the annual Eureka Memorial Lecture among other contributions to civic life. The Royal South Street Society remains responsible for musical contributions while the Art Gallery was shaped and formed by its influential members.

Traditions – Welsh Eisteddfod, Carmel Presbyterian Church, Cornish community and cultural life – religious associations.

The Chinese miners celebrated all their regular festivals with firecrackers and lavish spreads attracting much attention from the non-Chinese population although the more religious components, held in the Joss House, were kept private

8.5.2 Helping other people

8.4 Forming community organisations

Strong tradition of support for charitable institutions also grew. In the absence of a fully developed local government system, prominent citizens gathered into groups to support whatever charitable organization they thought their society needed. These included hospitals, asylums, orphanages, and homes for the poor and refuges and several had the same people on their board at the time of establishment reflecting the generous and pious nature of some of Ballarat’s most important people

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Ballarat Permaculture Guild; Ballarat Toy Library; Ballarat Pony club; Bike Clubs

8.5.3 Associating for mutual aid

Cornish and Welsh mining tradition expanded to become the ‘Ballarat way’ of co-operatively assisting each other in mining co-ops of men.

8.6 Worshipping 8.6.4 Making places for worship


8.1 Maintaining Spiritual Life

Churches

Other places of worship


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Bishops Palace

St. Aidens Theological College

The development of established religions and places of worship mirrored religious developments outside Ballarat and reflected community aspirations and expectations, but the ability of Ballarat’s citizens to contribute sufficient funds to erect well designed and strongly built churches was a direct result of the gold rushes. The individual churches reflected both the style and the prestige of their community.

Churches – many of multiple denominations. Regional centre for Catholic diocese and others?

Ballarat city contains a number of significant noteworthy churches and religious complexes. The Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church have a Diocese in Ballarat, both formed about the same time. In Ballarat the combination of religion and education has developed into a strong presence with several large complexes that were originally built as boarding schools, day schools with attached religious accommodation or simply religious accommodation to serve the extensive religious networks that emanated from Ballarat.

Some significant church buildings were also erected from the 1860s through to the 1890s as religious affiliations strove to express the importance of their belief through brick and stone and could call upon the wealth of their congregation.

The churches, their size or prominence and date which survive in specific localities across the municipality tell us about the dominant populations in those areas at various times. I.e. Carmel Welsh Presbyterian Church in Sebastopol c1870; Roman Catholic and Anglican Cathedrals and Diocese in central Ballarat c. 1860; Wesleyan Church at Wesley Hill, Catholic Church at Buninyong.

There was also a strong Jewish presence that resulted in one of Victoria’s few surviving synagogues built in 1861. Jewish Europeans were a strong presence from Ballarat’s early days with many being of Polish extraction.

8.8 Remembering Ballarat Avenue of Honour, Triumphal arch and associated elements.


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the Fallen The memorial arch

Avenue of Honour Ballarat

Memorial halls

Memorial plantings

Avenues of honour in smaller towns

Like all towns and cities Ballarat recognised its citizens who died in conflict by erecting memorials of one sort or another. Although the Avenue of Honour is perhaps the most significant memorial there are monuments, plaques and cenotaphs placed throughout Ballarat. In smaller townships it would be unusual not to find a memorial to soldiers who died in either of the two world wars and common to find a Boer War memorial.

Memorials, plaques and other forms of remembrance such as the planting of special trees like the Redwood commemorating Michael Casey ANA member at Learmonth or the naming of gardens or parks also act as strong visual reminders of our past. After World War 1 the women employed at the Lucas clothing factory in Ballarat followed up their outstanding war effort by raising money to plant a memorial avenue of elms, oaks and poplars from the Arch of Victory at Alfredton to Burrumbeet and Weatherboard. That initiative was matched at Learmonth, Addington, and unusually with walnuts, near the Tourello school.

8.9 Commemorating significant events

Stockade Gardens, est. 1864 and associated monuments

Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka

Avenue of Honour

Triumphal Arch

Queen Victoria Statue

8.10 Pursing excellence in the Arts and Science

8.10.4 Designing and building fine buildings

Civic buildings

Residential buildings

Homesteads

Bishopscourt


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Chamber of Commerce

Craigs Hotel

Store, Sebastopol

Town Hall and Council Chambers, Sebastopol, Learmonth, Buninyong

Orphanage

Railway Station

Fire Stations

Fine buildings in Learmonth, Buninyong – others?

Local architects and engineers

Designing fine buildings, gardens and landscapes

Advancing professional standards and practice

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Churches; Civic Hall; Mechanics Institute; Post Office; Glass conservatory – Botanical Gardens; the old Jail; Ballarat Town Hall

8.10.5 Advancing knowledge in science and technology

9. Shaping cultural and creative life

9.5 Advancing knowledge

Employing new technology - Penetrating through the basalt plain – new technologies employed

Establishing research facilities in science and

Technology – School of Mines

Several Australian mining innovations were made at the Ballarat diggings including the first use of a Chilean mill in 1851 and the first use of a mine cage in 1861.

Developing innovative technologies – School of Mines, Phoenix foundry

Recognising and maintaining Aboriginal traditional knowledge – Wathaurung Aboriginal Corporation (trading as Wadawurrung) and Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation

8.11Making Australian folklore

8.11.1 Celebrating Australian folk heroes

Eureka Stockade

Peter Lalor and the miners at Eureka


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8.11.2 Myth making and Story telling

The story of Eureka, gold discovery and gold mining resonates in Australian history.

Links with development and growth of democracy and Victoria, important story

Numerous secondary sources (books, articles, art works and museum exhibitions) depict these stories – both factual and representations of the myths that have grown up around the people and events involved.

8.12 Living in and around Australian homes

6. Building Towns, cities and the garden state

6.7 Making homes for Victorians

Quality residential development for the middle class widespread throughout Ballarat, less so in poorer areas such as Sebastopol

Timber and bricks principal materials used – timber was cheap and plentiful, bricks were available locally through brickworks capitalising on the waste of the mines

Local industries developed for residential foundry cast iron

Subdivisions commenced in various areas, replacing the mine sites as early as 1855

Later subdivision post war response

“Boom’ period brick villas and mansions

Miners cottages – timber, transportable – following the leads

Miners residences – timber, transient and modest

Timber cottages built in the late 1800s, and often replacing earlier ruder building stock, are still common and found clustered in former mining areas. The harsh sun and damp winters both encouraged the verandah as an essential element in domestic residences.

Residences constructed of timber as cheap, plentiful and readily available. Miners preferred timber residences because of the ease with which the house could be relocated. This was fairly common occurrence throughout the 1870s, particularly if the house had been erected on a miner’s right. Numerous small cottages appeared along the southern sections of the [Central business] Precinct.


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Squatter homesteads from the 1840s-1860s

The large properties such as The Laurels could comfortably support substantial homesteads surrounded by the myriad of farm sheds and buildings required on a working farm.

Selectors Homesteads

Middle Class (Tradesmen)Residences – brick/timber

Victorian villa residences c. 1880

Interwar Bungalows

Interwar Moderne

Federation timber dwelling

Post World War Two housing boom and consolidation

One area which is unusual in Ballarat and district housing patterns is the 1950s precinct to the east of Victoria Park known as the Waller Estate located on old mining ground. After World War Two, when it was obvious there was a housing shortage, some developers such as this local consortium led by local businessman Roy Waller, decided to offer a small scale controlled development. Unlike the normal grid pattern of streets and roads, this modern estate featured cul de sacs and crescents and allowed prospective owners to choose their house design from a range of patterns or to draw up their own provided they used the estate builders. It was the first of its kind in Ballarat.

Examples from Ballarat Imagine include: Buninyong village; Heritage areas; Learmonth village; 1870-1930 houses; Architecture; Heritage buildings; Old homes – miners cottages


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8.13 Living in cities and suburbs

?

8.14 Living in the country and rural settlements

?

Marking the Phases of Life

9.1 Promoting mother’s and babies health

8.6 Marking the phases of life

Maternal and Child Health centres

Maternity Hospital

9.2 Growing up 9.2.4 Courting 8.6 Marking the phases of life

Mount Buninyong Lookout

9.7 Dying Ballarat ‘Old’ Cemetery (pre 1867)

Ballarat ‘New’ Cemetery (1867 onwards)

Learmonth Cemetery

Buninyong Cemetery

Private burial grounds and lone graves associated with homesteads, shepherds huts, outstations, pastoral properties

Coghill’s Creek Cemetery


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APPENDIX 3: IAP2 SPECTRUM OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

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