Bendigo property

The Dja Dja Wurrung, also known as the Djaara, are the traditional owners of the Mount Alexander area, which includes Greater Bendigo. They drew on the district's rich hunting grounds, and were displaced by white settlers who took up the first of its sheep runs in 1837. Settlement and dispossession reached the Dja Dja Wurrung in two waves: first from the south, beginning in 1837, and later from the north, from 1845.

The arrival of animals brought by settlers added to the fall in Dja Dja Wurrung numbers. Their snouts "root up" the nutritious moon-nar tuber, or yam daisy, and after a year the plant was noticed to be becoming scarce. Squatters took up runs in the district.

Widespread gold mining left the district environmentally devastated, with permanent damage. The Dja Dja Wurrung were decimated and displaced. The channels and weirs they had built from timber stakes, to slow the fall of summer flows, were wrecked. Waterholes where people gathered in small groups when rain was scarce, and from which they carried water in skin bags, were muddied, polluted and drained. The soaks they dug into sandy banks to reach the water table were obliterated too. Some waterholes in creek rock platforms, covered with slabs to keep animals out, may still remain, unidentified.

Official discovery of gold on Bendigo Creek came in October 1851, at the north-eastern edge of the Ravenswood run, which had previously been called the Mount Alexander North run. People believe the creek took its name from a local shepherd who boxed as an amateur and worked at that run. His nickname came, possibly ironically, from the prizefighter William Abednego Thompson, who was known as "Bendigo".

That account is widely accepted, though it has been disputed, as no written records from those early shepherds are known. Other accounts say the creek was named after the English boxer directly, by the overseer of the run, who admired him. Others tie the name to a remark about a bend in the creek, or suggest the creek was first Bandicoot Creek, later corrupted, or that it honoured a Portuguese miner.

In 1852, during the great gold rush, tens of thousands of people arrived, and the place changed within a year. For four months the place was also called Castleton. In 1852, under the Surveyor General of Victoria, Robert Hoddle, the surveyor William Swan Urquhart mapped Mount Alexander and the surrounding ranges and goldfields and fixed the township site as "Sandhurst".

Gold was found here just after the neighbouring Castlemaine fields, and diggers moved across from there. In less than a year the population reached 40,000. People arrived from many parts of the world, particularly China and Europe. By the late 1850s, up to 17 per cent of the mining population at Bendigo were Cornish alone, and in 1856 almost a quarter were Chinese. Some of the Chinese diggers' descendants still live in the region.

In 1853, prospectors held a large protest, the Red Ribbon Rebellion, against the cost of the licence fee. Police and the miners' leaders handled the protest with diplomacy, and it stayed peaceful. The boomtown grew quickly from a tent city into a major centre, with grand public buildings. It became a borough in 1863.

Bendigo was linked by rail in 1862. Growth followed, and the city gained flour and woollen mills, tanneries, quarries, foundries, eucalyptus oil works, food production and timber cutting. After the alluvial gold gave out, quartz gold was taken from deep shafts using industrial systems. The city was officially known as Sandhurst until 1891, though people always called it Bendigo.

Bendigo was declared a city in 1871, and rapid population growth brought a water shortage that was partly solved by a new viaduct harnessing the Coliban River. The architect William Charles Vahland left an important mark on Bendigo in this period. He is credited with the cottage design known as a Vahland House, with a central door, a sash window on either side, a hallway running the length of the house and verandahs in iron lace. His work includes more than 80 buildings. Among them is the Alexandra Fountain.

A tram network was established by 1890, and part of it still runs as a tourism service. The wealth of the gold years shows today in the city's Victorian architectural heritage. Until the Western Australian goldfields overtook it in the 1890s, Bendigo was the most productive gold area in Australia. Between 1851 and 1954, the Bendigo gold field produced 777 tonnes of gold.

After a temporary drop in population, growth returned from the 1930s, and the city became a centre for manufacturing and regional services. Gold mining still continues. In 1994, under state municipal reforms, the City of Bendigo, the Borough of Eaglehawk, the Rural City of Marong and the shires of Huntly and Strathfieldsaye were merged to form the City of Greater Bendigo. Formal recognition of the Dja Dja Wurrung as traditional owners came in 2013, covering part of Central Victoria. The land beneath the City of Greater Bendigo is within that area.

The gold rush is still the focus of tourism in the city. Prominent attractions include the Central Deborah Gold Mine and the Bendigo Tramways, both managed by the Bendigo Trust, a council-linked organisation preserving the city's heritage, as well as the Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo Pottery and the Great Stupa.

In recent years, population growth has been strongest in suburbs such as Epsom, Kangaroo Flat, Strathdale and Strathfieldsaye. The Calder Freeway, which links Melbourne and Bendigo, was completed in 2009. By 2012 the city held about 100,617 people, up from some 78,000 in 1991. The city is surrounded by parts of the Greater Bendigo National Park and an important bird area noted for swift parrots and other woodland birds.

Bendigo sits in the Bendigo Valley, close to the geographical centre of Victoria, approximately 150 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. Nearby towns include Axedale, Goornong, Rochester, Elmore, Maryborough, Kyneton, Heathcote and Castlemaine. The climate is dry temperate, with warm, variable summers and cool, cloudy winters. January days average a maximum of 30.2 °C, July nights average a minimum of 2.7 °C, and most of the city's annual rainfall falls between June and September.

The central business district is the main retail centre, with shopping districts also in Eaglehawk, Kangaroo Flat, Golden Square, Strathdale and Epsom. The major industries are health, finance, tourism, commerce, education, food processing and primary industries, and the Bendigo Bank, founded in 1858 as a building society, is headquartered in the city. La Trobe University has a campus in the city.