A snapshot of Ballarat, VIC in the 1930s produced by Efftee Production.
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00:00 [Music]
00:10 Once known as the Golden City, but now as the Garden City of the state,
00:15 Ballarat has more vivid historical associations than any other country centre in Victoria.
00:20 The city is approached through an avenue of honour, 14 miles long,
00:25 and in it each tree represents a citizen who enlisted in the Great War.
00:30 The avenue ends in an arch of victory, also to the memory of Ballarat men and women who served overseas,
00:37 and joins the city at Sturt Street, which affords ample evidence of a very active civic pride,
00:43 with its great breadth, glorious trees, and fine examples of statuary.
00:49 Here we have a view of Lyddiard Street, where once the booted diggers rode their gold-shod horses
00:54 in the roaring mining days.
00:56 Those were the days when the great Peter Laylore, strung by a sense of government injustice,
01:01 led his band of angry miners in the Eureka Stockade upheaval.
01:06 On the spot where Laylore and his determined diggers defied authority,
01:12 Ballarat citizens have erected this obelisk,
01:15 for the years have turned what was once a rebellious act into an incident of proud romance.
01:21 Ballarat, and all Australia, now recognise in that act the first determined protest of Australia's sturdy democracy.
01:32 Ballarat is famed also for its statuary, its city hall,
01:39 and its post office building surrounded by shady trees.
01:45 What a contrast to this unlovely relic of the past.
01:50 Earth, torn and honeycombed, and made unfruitful by man in his feverish search for gold.
01:56 Yet the search has not quite ended, and since the recent gold revival,
02:01 the very streets, as we see here, have again been torn up by eager miners.
02:07 "Treasure before traffic" is the slogan of these modern gold diggers.
02:12 Ballarat, originally a quiet pastoral area,
02:15 suddenly became world famous when gold was discovered there on August 25th, 1851.
02:21 30 ounces being found on the first day,
02:24 and this column marks the spot where the first nugget was unearthed.
02:28 Record nuggets were discovered later, and here is a model of one of them.
02:32 They used that as small chains in the digging days.
02:36 Imitating London, Ballarat too has its own curiosity shop.
02:41 This unique house, with its grounds, was devised by a plasterer named James Warwick nearly 40 years ago.
02:49 It took him many years to complete this quaint edifice,
02:52 and the walls are covered with all manner of curious odds and ends.
02:56 Old bits of china, and 10,000 other strange scraps of plots.
03:07 And now we begin to see why Ballarat so proudly claims the title of Garden City.
03:13 This is the entrance to the botanical gardens,
03:16 which rival those of many a capital city,
03:19 for their glorious trees, velvet lawns, and really beautiful statues.
03:33 In these gardens, civic Ballarat has gone far to make amends for the affront to nature perpetrated in the digging days.
03:41 Here, in later days, they have wrought in beauty for the sake of their pride,
03:46 where men once wrought in ugliness for the sake of gold.
03:51 The statuary is truly remarkable,
03:57 and Ballarat's fame has gone beyond the seas for this as much as for her golden harvests.
04:03 Perhaps the most remarkable of all is the famous flight from Pompeii, by Benzoni,
04:09 for which the city has been offered and has refused 14,000 pounds.
04:14 Unlike many of Australia's inland cities, Ballarat has no lack of beautiful waterways.
04:20 The charmingly named Lake Windery is quite close to the city,
04:25 and if someone in the Garden City has not made a song already entitled "Under the Willow of Windery",
04:31 it is liable to be done at any moment.
04:35 Ballarat waxes lyric over its water reaches and its placid lake.
04:44 Here, where the rude diggers once washed their gold and their shirts,
04:48 now fly small steamboats and pleasure craft of every description.
04:55 (Music)
04:58 From gold to gardens, from revolution to solid and satisfying riches in beauty and art,
05:13 this is the history of Ballarat, and we say farewell to the Garden City,
05:18 as in the quiet evening light we gaze over placid waters of Windery and dream of the days
05:24 when red-shirted booted diggers thronged these sylvan waves,
05:28 and Peter Lailloir and his dogged rebels defied authority with gunshots that echoed over these tranquil waters.
05:35 (Music)
05:38 [Music]