Bendigo City Tour – Goldfields
Bendigo
Length: 2 kilometres
Walk: 2 hours
Start: Bendigo Visitor Information Centre
Finish: Bendigo Visitor Information Centre
Stops: 13
The Bendigo City Tour is a great way to see the city, its beautiful Victorian buildings and discover its colourful history.
The grandeur of Bendigo’s historic buildings is testimony to the incredible wealth found in Bendigo’s quartz reefs, which stretched 3,600 hectares underground. That wealth funded major periods of building activity in the 1880s and 1890s and resulted in fine public buildings such as the Bendigo Post Office (1887), the Law Courts (1896) and the Art Gallery (1867).
No expense was spared – buildings were ornate and combined many architectural styles. The Shamrock hotel (1897) was rebuilt three times, each more lavish than the last.
German architect Charles Vahland and his business partner Robert Getzchmann created buildings that remain at the centre of Bendigo’s cultural and commercial life and house such institutions as the Performing Arts Centre (Masonic Hall) and the Sandhurst Club.
Download the audio files below to your iPod or pick up an MP3 player already loaded with the tour from the Bendigo Visitor Information Centre and explore Bendigo's rich architectual heritage.
