The Best Things to Do in Ballarat

From thunderous musket salutes to twilight concerts with guitar-loving roos and boiled sweets, Ballarat’s gold-rush boomtown still pays out in experiences. This is your guide to the best things to do in Ballarat.

One of the most popular things to do in Ballarat is to discover Australia's gold rush history in Sovereign Hill. 

Australia's post-colonial political, economic, and social development can be traced back to the historic Ballarat Gold Mine, where James Dunlop and James Regan first discovered untold wealth at Poverty Point in 1851.

The most profound of the country's several gold rushes took place in this regional Victorian town, luring people from around the world with promises of their own “eureka” moment. Today, you can explore not only the heart of Australia's gold rush in Ballarat, but witness how history has been ingeniously preserved and beautifully expressed by the nation's most unique attraction, the cinematic living museum of Sovereign Hill .

There are some mighty large nuggets of history to dig out from regional Victoria, and it's through these interactive experiences that you really get a sense of how one major discovery directed the course of modern Australian history.

It would be impossible to visit the historic town of Ballarat and not be completely taken by Sovereign Hill. The perfectly preserved strip looks like the film set of a Spaghetti Western, but instead of wobbly re-enacted gunfights and ripped Clint Eastwood posters, you have costumed street performances, gold panning, and fun for the whole family. You can even send the kids to school.

The Australian gold rush is given many angles on this dusty, time-stuck road, otherwise known as Bradfield Street. Here, explore a meticulously rebuilt 19th-century gold mining town and soak up the transportive magic with live demonstrations in dozens of traditional shops. 

Watch the local blacksmith pound piping hot metal at Dilge's Blacksmiths, witness how wheelwrights used to build carriages from scratch at Procter's Wheelwrights & Coachbuilder, and taste why boiled lollies were just as prized as gold at Brown's Confectionery Factory. These authentic recreations embody the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the 1850s furore.

How does a small settlement in regional Victoria grow to become a wealthy provincial city responsible for a major cultural shift in Australia? After you're done exploring the Victorian-era shopfronts, find out by talking to the residents at Speedwell Street Cottages as they tell fireside stories of home life in growing Ballarat, humanizing this rapid development through palpable tales of shock, surprise, and excitement. 

Locals love: While gun fights might be off the cards in this Wild West town, you can watch how mounted police used to maintain order with the Trooper Musket-Firing Demonstration located at Government Camp with costumed actors offloading their old-school munitions into the sky. Loud noises don't end there. The Voltaic Battery Blasting Demonstration uncovers the true dangers of the mining trade each day at 4pm, with mock controlled blasts taking place just behind the Post Office.

Given the sheer amount of things to do at Sovereign Hill, you're going to want to cling close to the living museum by checking into the four-star Mercure Ballarat Hotel & Convention Centre. The 97-room hotel sits opposite Ballarat's living museum, fronted by an ornamental lake and manicured gardens for a serene country escape. 

There are nine two-bedroom apartments at the hotel so it's the perfect place to stay in Ballarat for families and groups too. 

And while there are plenty of places to eat in town, including the vintage bakeries of Sovereign Hill, having direct access to the hotel's award-winning Azzuri restaurant is an added bonus. The kitchen prides itself on modern Australian cuisine that's refined with produce from regional Victoria, matching the exacting standards that have made the state one of the most reliable foodie destinations in the Southern Hemisphere.  

Locals love: Wake up early for a buffet breakfast before heading down to Government Camp to pan for your own gold. From 10:30am, you'll be able to sift through the waters and learn how to find some treasure of your own; if you're lucky, you will.

The multi-award-winning Ballarat Wildlife Park isn't your typical stroll through tiny animal enclosures. Set amongst the beautiful gum trees, just minutes from Sovereign Hill, this is like a petting zoo buffed up with over 100 free-roaming kangaroos that you can feed by hand, as well as dozens of cuddly koalas, wombats, emus, and even some of the world's smallest penguins. 

Tigers, snakes, cassowaries, saltwater crocodiles, and giant tortoises - amongst many others - make this one of the most fascinating wildlife parks in Australia. Close encounters with all furry friends comes with varying add-on costs, so the price can build up quite fast if you want to experience the full breadth of what Ballarat Wildlife Park has to offer. 

Locals love: To make most of your time here, keep an eye peeled on the Ballarat Wildlife Park website for the popular Twilight Sessions. They only happen every once in a blue moon, but they enrich the atmosphere with music and food, presenting the world's only concert where you can hear the sweet strums of acoustic guitars while kangaroos dance around you.

The 45-minute Quartz Mine Tours may be small snippets of what life was like in those deep, dark, and isolated mines, but it's more than enough to put you squarely in the shoes of the diggers once lured by promises of their own life-changing nuggets. Each of the three guided tours includes underground access via an inclined railway tram, sliding down into the depths just as the nervously excited 19th century miners would have all those years ago.  

'Labyrinth of Gold' is the best choice if you want to focus on workings and demonstrations of the early mining equipment used to carefully pick through sediment in the hopes of finding fortune. Such seismic discoveries wouldn't have been possible without these tools, so getting hands-on with this technology is essential to understanding the daily struggles these diggers went through.

'Trapped' is for tragedy obsessives. One of Australia's worst underground mining disasters has been turned into a multisensory experience where you'll get to see, hear, and feel what life was like when searching for gold took a darker turn. You'll even be blanketed in complete darkness at some points.

'Secret Chamber' is a deeper retelling of the human story behind the gold rush, focused on the waves of immigration via the triumph and tragedy of two Chinese brothers. The sudden flood of different cultures and mannerisms made Ballarat one of the most deeply complex and complicated settlements in Australia, so this is a great way to really understand why and how the country forged its famously multicultural identity. 

Locals love: You'll find a free self-guided tour at Red Hill Mine with the famous 1858 Welcome Nugget, which weighs almost 70kg and was one of the biggest discoveries in the world at the time when it was discovered in 1858.

There are plenty of avenues to experience Ballarat's distinctive sense of character, but it's not just tales of golden nuggets that make this city feel like a living, breathing time capsule.  

Colorful century-old trams are on display at the Ballarat Tramway Museum, located at the south end of the Ballarat Botanical Gardens where you can take ticketed rides on board some of the most unique and well-preserved cars in Australia. 

The open museum operates along a public road on an original section of the track and recreates the entire transit experience from uniformed conductors and original paper tickets to authentic tram stops along the way. 

Locals Love: Admiring rich Ballarat architecture is another way to deepen the story of how this affluent city grew since 1851. Sturt Street is a short walk from the Ballarat Tramway Museum so take this route and scope out the beautiful Belle Époque styles standing next to Art Deco treasures.