150 km north of Melbourne. Gold was first discovered here in 1851, setting off the Central Victoria Gold Rush. The gold claims here once covered over 300 sq km, and when the surface gold ran out the mining companies moved in and began sinking shafts. There was so much gold at Bendigo that it didn’t run out until 1954.

Bendigo is now a large provincial town, but still has legacies of the gold era. The best of the ornate old Victorian buildings are on central Pall Mall – the most ornate of all being the slightly absurd Shamrock Hotel. Round the corner in View Street is The Bendigo Art Gallery (www.bendigoartgallery.com.au). This has a number of works by painters who lived here in the old days, as well as a varied collection of Australian art.

If you want to visit a local mine, head down the Calder Highway to the corner of Violet Street. Here you can take a tour of the Central Deborah Goldmine (www.central-deborah.com). This was the last working mine in Bendigo, and you can descend 60 m down a shaft to see the underground galleries. The main shaft plunges through more than a dozen levels to a depth of 500 m. There’s also an exhibit of thought-provoking old photographs.

The other main sight is the Bendigo Joss House at Finn Street in North Bendigo (www.bendigojosshouse.com). During the gold era this was the local Chinese community’s temple. It was built in 1860 and has a highly evocative oriental atmosphere. (What did such people make of their coarse, bewhiskered fellow diggers?) Of particular interest are the figures which symbolize the 12 years of the Chinese lunar cycle (the year of the rabbit, the year of the rat, and so on).

In the centre of town at Bridge Street (which used to be the heart of Chinatown) there’s also the Golden Dragon Museum (www.goldendragonmuseum.org), which contains all kinds of exhibits from the local Chinese processions, including what is claimed to be the world’s largest Chinese imperial dragon.