Sovereign Hill

Sovereign Hill is an open-air museum in Ballarat, Australia, depicting the first ten years after the 1851 gold discovery, featuring over 60 historically recreated buildings and interactive gold panning.

Planning your visit

Gold was found in Victoria in 1851, and within a decade the colony's population had tripled and Melbourne had become one of the richest cities in the world. Sovereign Hill recreates Ballarat during those first ten years across an outdoor site of over 60 buildings with costumed staff working as they would have.

Panning for gold in the creek is the fixture, and visitors do occasionally find flakes worth keeping. The gold pour, in which molten bullion is cast into an ingot, runs several times daily.

Underground mine tours descend into shafts showing the shift from surface alluvial digging to deep quartz mining and the companies that came with it.

The Eureka Stockade of 1854, when miners rebelled against licence fees and were fired on by troops, happened here and is treated as a founding episode of Australian democracy.

Allow a full day. The main booking is a general admission ticket. Current availability is listed below.