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Things to see and do in Ballarat

Grand Avenues & Boulevards

Ballarat is notable for its very wide boulevards. The main street is Sturt Street which is considered among one of the finest main avenues in Australia.

Ballarat is home to the largest of a collection of several Avenues of Honour in Victoria. The fifteen kilometre long Ballarat Avenue of Honour consists of a total of approximately 4000 trees, mostly deciduous which in many parts arch completely over the road. Each tree has a bronze plaque dedicated to a soldier from the Ballarat region who enlisted during World War I.

Statues & Monuments

The city also has the greatest concentration of public statuary in any Australian city with many parks and streets featuring sculptures and statues dating from the 1860's to the present day. Some of the other unique memorials located in the city include a bandstand situated in the heart of the city that was funded and built by the City of Ballarat Band in 1913 as a tribute to the bandsmen of the RMS Titanic, a fountain dedicated to the early explorers Burke and Wills, and those dedicated to Monarchs and those who have played pivotal roles in the development of the city and its rich social fabric.

War Memorials

Ex POW Memorial Ballarat has an extensive array of significant war memorials, the most recent of which is the Australian Ex Prisoner of War Memorial. The most prominent memorial in the city is the Ballarat Victory Arch that spans the old Western Highway on the Western approaches of the city. The archway serves as the focal point for the Avenue of Honour. Other significant individual monuments located along Sturt Street include those dedicated to the Boer War (1899-1901), World War II (1939-1945), and Vietnam (1962-1972).

Parks & Gardens

The Ballarat Botanical Gardens are amongst the finest Botanical Gardens in Australia with extensive varieties of native and introduced species of plants and trees. Lake Wendouree hosted the rowing events for the 1956 Summer Olympics, and is a large recreational lake created out of former wetlands. The gardens are home to the annual Ballarat Begonia Festival, and feature a modern glasshouse and horticultural centre. Also of note is the Prime-Ministers' Walk which features bronze busts of every Australian Prime Minister.

Architectural Heritage

The legacy of the wealth generated during Ballarat's gold boom is still visible in a large number of fine stone buildings in and around the city, especially in the Lydiard Street area which contains some of Victoria's finest examples of Victorian era buildings- many of which are on the Victorian Heritage Register or classified by the National Trust of Australia.

Notable civic buildings include: the Town Hall (1870-72), the Post Office (1864), The Ballarat Fine Art Gallery (1887), the Mechanics' Institute (1860, 1869), the Queen Victoria Wards of the Ballarat Base Hospital (1890's), the Ballarat railway station (1862, 1877, 1888).
Other fine buildings include Provincial Hotel (1909), Reid's Coffee Palace (1886), Craig's Royal Hotel (1862-1890) and Her Majesty's Theatre (1875).

* This article uses material from Wikipedia.