220 km west of Melbourne on the Western Highway. In 1857, a small army of 700 hopeful Chinese diggers was tramping across this region on its way to the Central Victorian goldfields. They seem to have got lost, because the goldfields were the other way. Then one morning they woke up to find that their dreams had come true. They were camped right in the middle of an undiscovered goldfield. At once they all set to work with a will – and were soon recovering gold at the astonishing rate of more than 1,000 ounces a week. Then the gold ran out, so the Chinese turned round and went home to spend their hard-gotten gains in the fleshpots of Shanghai.

This is how Ararat began, and it might have been how it ended, if the sheep grazers hadn’t moved in. Today the town and its outlying districts has a population of 8,000 humans and a million sheep. There’s not much to see here, apart from the usual left-over Victorian buildings, and the small Langi Morgala Museum (www.sites.google.com/site/museumlangimorgala/), which has Aborigine artefacts and gold relics on display.

The main Chinese legacy lies north of here at the settlement of Great Western. Here the underground tunnels hewed out by the Chinese in search of gold now contain another valuable export. They are now the storage cellars of Septet (www.seppelt.com.au), the local winemaker with a big reputation for sparkling wine. Located on Moyston Road are no less than three kilometres of labyrinthine tunnels where the wine rests and matures. You’re not allowed to call Seppelt  champagne, but the makers claim it tastes better than many which we are allowed to call champagne. There are several other respectable wineries in the area, including the Concongella Vineyard.

Ararat makes a useful base for touring the nearby Grampians.