 General store / Welcome Stranger monument, Dunolly |
Victoria’s heart of gold is a land of faded glories, of dreams which won’t quite die.
 In the wide, sleepy main street of Dunolly - Broadway, what else? - an obelisk honours a misshapen 72 kilogram boulder unearthed last century: “The world’s largest nugget, 2332 ounces, the Welcome Stranger was cut up on this anvil on the 9th of February 1869”. The great rush began in Dunolly in 1856 and an estimated 339 nuggets were found in the district, where fifty thousand diggers congregated.
The liveliest business on Broadway is Finders Prospectors Supplies, whose shop window displays gold pans, boots and maps. Proprietor Ken Roberts says as much gold as ever is being found around Dunolly, but the prospectors are shy of publicity.
Back on the Calder Highway, the main street of Inglewood leads to an amazing agglomeration of rusty, angular machinery and vehicles. The Blue Eucy Still is evidence of a less spectacular bush industry which also helped sustain many country families through the Great Depression.
The flamboyant Victorian architecture of the city of Bendigo speaks volumes about the fortunes won - and lost - from the gold-bearing quartz reefs. Bendigo became a melting pot during those boom years, each nationality setting up its own quarter and none more distinctive than that of the diggers from southern China.
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