Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Panorama of Ballarat taken from the Town Hall clocktower

Panorama of Ballarat taken from the Town Hall clocktower

1874
Glass photonegative

This is part of a panorama of Ballarat taken by Charles Bayliss from the tower of the Town Hall in June 1874. It looks north to the colonnades of Ballarat Railway Station, built in 1862. Over to the right, on the horizon, are the mullock heaps of the Black Hill goldmines.

Mark Twain, who visited in 1895, was impressed by the town’s rebellious history, but less than impressed by the vista. ‘There is nothing like surface-mining to snatch the graces and beauties and benignities out of a paradise, and make an odious and repulsive spectacle of it.’

At the bottom left is the Good Templars’ Hall, where Ballarat’s temperance advocates met. Apparently they had some influence in town, because in 1872, the City of Ballarat Company’s new pumping engine was christened by them with soda water, instead of champagne.

From the Australian Town and Country Journal, 21 August 1880

THE new lease of life which has been given, to mining enterprise here is always spoken of as "a revival " by the good people of Ballarat. But every now and then the passion for speculating takes the form of a mania. Revival is no word for the excitement which breaks out from time to time when a promising discovery is made. A very small find is invariably thought to be the precursor of unbounded riches ; from an insignificant residuum of fact grows a harvest of fallacious hopes and costly delusions. [Australian Town and Country Journal, 21 August 1880]