Description of the attraction
Sovereign Hill is an old town-museum of gold diggers located 110 km from Melbourne. Here, to the smallest detail, the life of the inhabitants of Australia during the "gold rush" is recreated: old carts rumble along the streets of the town, ladies flaunt in 19th century dresses, and dashing fortune hunters who have flooded to the "green" continent from all over the world drink whiskey and beer in saloons. … The gold found here in 1851 forever changed the history of the country - the population tripled in a matter of years, how cities and industry began to grow by leaps and bounds.
In the middle of the 19th century, a small town of Sovereign Hill arose on the Ballart Hills - it was here that one of the largest gold veins in the world was discovered. The city grew: shops and craft workshops opened, new prospectors arrived, who brought wives and children with them, or started families already on the spot. For almost 50 years, 650 tons of gold were mined here, but already at the beginning of the 20th century, the deposit dried up, and with it Sovereign Hill, which became one of the many Australian ghost towns, began to fade.
The new "old" life of the town began in 1970, when it was decided to open an open-air museum here in order to preserve the old buildings and recreate the atmosphere of the glorious years. Today, Sovereign Hill is home to about three hundred residents who reproduce the lifestyle of their mid-19th century ancestors. The city has a school, theater, bank, post office and printing house. Artisans use ancient technologies to make metal dishes, candles, horseshoes, furniture - all this can be bought in souvenir shops. Tourists can also visit the mine that once mined gold, watch ingots being cast, or minting their own coins. Or you can try your luck in a gold-bearing stream and try to wash yourself with a gold crumb as a keepsake.
In Sovereign Hill, there is an underground exhibition dedicated to the disaster at the Kreshwick mine in 1882, when 22 people died as a result of the collapse and flooding of the mine. This accident is still considered the largest in Australia in the mining sector.
