[edit]
Indigenous history and European settlement[edit]
Bendigo Creek, named after a local shepherd and amateur boxer who, in turn, earned the sobriquet because his fighting style resembled that of English bare-knuckle champion William Abednego "Bendigo" Thompson
The traditional owners of the Mount Alexander area, traditionally named Leanganook, that includes Greater Bendigo, are the Dja Dja Wurrung (Djaara) people. They exploited the rich local hunting grounds from which they were displaced by the arrival by white settlers, who established the first of a number of vast sheep runs in 1837. The Dja Dja Wurrung peoples experienced two waves of settlement and dispossession: from the south from 1837 and from the north from 1845. The marked decrease in Dja Dja Wurrung population was also due to the arrival of non-indigenous animals; they use their noses to "root up" the nutritious moon-nar tuber (yam daisy); after just a year it was noticed the plant was becoming scarce.
Squatters in the area included: Donald Campbell at Bullock Creek in Ravenswood; J. and R. Bakewell to the north of Bendigo; Heap and Grice to the north-west; Archibald McDougall to the west; Joseph Raleigh and James Robinson along the Campaspe River to the south; and Thomas, Jones and William Barnett to the east. The Ravenswood "Mount Alexander North run", occupied from c. 1840 by Donald Campbell, was acquired by brothers Stewart and Robert Gibson in 1848, with Frederick Fenton later replacing one of the Gibson brothers. After the discovery of gold in 1851, Fenton sold provisions to the miners and agisted their horses. Becoming the sole owner of the Ravenswood run in 1857, Fenton built its substantial homestead.
Gold was officially discovered on Bendigo Creek at the north-eastern boundary of the Ravenswood run, earlier known as the Mount Alexander North run, in October 1851. The creek is believed to have been named "Bendigo Creek" after a local shepherd and amateur boxer who worked at the Mount Alexander North run, nicknamed (possibly ironically) for the English bare-knuckle prizefighter William Abednego "Bendigo" Thompson. This theory of the name's origin is widely accepted, albeit historically controversial, since there are no known written records from these early shepherds. Other theories posit that the creek was named: after the English boxer "Bendigo" Thompson directly, by the overseer of the run Thomas Myers, who admired Thompson; for a specific quote referring to a bend in the creek, said by either Myers ("all bend and go" or "round a bend I go") or by "aboriginal shepherds" ("to bendy go"); originally, Bandicoot Creek, later corrupted to Bendigo; or after a Portuguese miner named Bernand "Ben" Deigo.
The area was transformed in less than a year as tens of thousands of people arrived during the great gold rush in 1852. It was also called Castleton for a period of four months.
Widespread gold mining caused environmental devastation and permanent damage in the district, decimating and displacing the Dja Dja Wurrung and destroying the infrastructure they created over generations to maximise seasonal drainage patterns; the channels and weirs they built out of timber stakes, to slow receding summer flows, were wrecked; water holes where the people gathered in smaller groups during periods of scarce rainfall and from which they transported water in skin bags when moving, were muddied, polluted and drained; the soaks they had dug between banks into sandy sediment to tap into the water table were likewise obliterated. Some of their waterholes in rock platforms of creeks that they found or enlarged, then covered with slabs to protect them from animals, may still remain, unidentified.
Gold mining boom[edit]
Further information: Victorian gold rush
Bendigo, 1853
Goldfields and town of Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, c.1873
Gold was officially discovered in the area in October 1851, just after the other significant goldfields in neighbouring Castlemaine, from where a number of diggers migrated, bringing the total population to 40,000 in less than a year. A number of these diggers were Chinese and their descendants still live in the region. During 1852, under the direction of the Surveyor General of Victoria, Robert Hoddle, William Swan Urquhart was making a general survey of Mount Alexander and the surrounding ranges and the goldfields.
Deep Gully Mine, 1857
He fixed the site of the township as "Sandhurst". On 13 July 1852, Hoddle passed on to Urquhart the request of Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe for a plan of the Mount Alexander gold workings, and his order that he mark out a reserve at the junction of Golden Gully with Bendigo Creek, and the camp on the west side of the creek below the junction. In late August La Trobe wanted him to report urgently on the best reserves for agriculture in the district. By 26 November he had mapped Bendigo Creek and Myers Creek and his survey of the Bendigo Valley and environs marked township reserves at Bullock Creek, Ravenswood and Happy Jack where settlement was already taking place. His plan General Survey of the Bendigo Goldfields showing the proposed reserves for townships. Drawn by W. S. Urquhart, Melbourne, November 1852 recommended sites for national schools, churches, markets and other public purposes reserved from sale.
The predominant population of the Victorian goldfields throughout the gold rush era was British (being English, Irish, and Scottish), with the largest non-British population being Chinese. During the early gold rush period, about 4,000 Cornish miners went to Mount Alexander (Castlemaine), and by the late 1850s up to 17% of the mining population in Bendigo were Cornish-alone, with almost a quarter being Chinese in 1856. Such was the influence of the former that many of their mining practicises were respected and adopted. By the 1871 Victorian census, approxiamtely 15,000 residents of the central goldfields were Cornish.
In 1853, a large protest called the Red Ribbon Rebellion was held over the cost of the licence fee for prospectors, though it passed peacefully due to good diplomacy by police and miners' leaders. From being a tent city, the boomtown grew rapidly into a major urban centre with grand public buildings. The municipality became a borough in 1863, officially known as Sandhurst until 1891, but always unofficially as Bendigo.
During this period, miner Henry Bain was noted in local accounts as a cultural patron who hosted informal gatherings of writers, artists and prospectors, later described as the "Golden Circle."
The railway had reached Bendigo by 1862, stimulating rapid growth, with flour mills, woollen mills, tanneries, quarries, foundries, eucalyptus oil production, food production industries and timber cutting. When the alluvial gold ran out, extraction of quartz-based gold continued in deep shafts using industrial systems.
Selection in the future county of Bendigo (created in 1869) commenced under the Land Act of 1865, with most settlement occurring around Sandhurst and Eaglehawk.
Decline and regeneration[edit]
Bendigo from Camp Hill, 1886
Bendigo was declared a city in 1871. Rapid population growth brought a water shortage, partially solved with a new viaduct that harnessed the Coliban River.
The architect William Charles Vahland (1828–1915) left an important mark on Bendigo during this period. He is credited with the popular cottage design known as a Vahland House. The cottage design that has vastly been customised shares a common theme of a central door, a sash window either side, a central hallway that runs the entire length of the house and verandahs ordained in iron lace, a style that was soon adopted across the state of Victoria. Vahland also designed more than 80 buildings, including the Alexandra Fountain, arguably the most prominent monument in Bendigo, with its granite dolphins, unicorns, nymphs and allegorical figures. A tram network was established by 1890, some of which is still in operation as a tourism service currently.
Alexandra Fountain in Charing Cross, c. 1920s, now listed along with the surrounding buildings on the Victorian Heritage Register
After a temporary drop in population, renewed growth occurred from the 1930s as the city consolidated as a manufacturing and regional service centre, though gold mining continues. Recent growth has been most heavily concentrated in areas such as Epsom, Kangaroo Flat, Strathdale and Strathfieldsaye.[citation needed]
On 28 March 2013, the Dja Dja Wurrung people were formally recognised as the traditional owners for part of Central Victoria, including the land on which the City of Greater Bendigo sits.
In 1994, under municipal reforms of Victoria's Kennett government, the City of Bendigo was abolished and merged with the Borough of Eaglehawk, the Huntly and Strathfieldsaye shires, and the Rural City of Marong to form the larger City of Greater Bendigo. The population of the city increased from around 78,000 in 1991 to about 100,617 in 2012. Bendigo is currently one of the fastest-growing regional centres in Victoria.
