Victorian Goldfields World Heritage Listing - What does it mean?

As of January 31st, the Victorian Goldfields were added to Australia’s World Heritage Tentative List, a major step on the path to a World Heritage Listing. From this point World Heritage status could take 3 years.

Spanning from Ballarat to Bendigo, the Goldfields are home to some of the world’s most significant gold-rush sites.

The Victorian Goldfields is currently represented in the Tentative List submission by:

the Castlemaine Goldfields and Historic Townships, with pre-eminent alluvial diggings of an early major gold rush in Victoria

Creswick and the Deep Lead Landscape as an unparalleled example of this rare type of gold mining

Bendigo Historic Urban Landscape as one of the world’s most notable gold rush cities

Lalgambuk (Mt Franklin), an area that evidences Aboriginal connection to Country before, during and after the gold rushes 

Great Nuggets Historic Landscape which embraces diggings that yielded the greatest concentration of the largest gold nuggets the world had ever known

Walhalla Alpine Mining Landscape with its steep topography that guided settlement centred on Victoria’s richest gold mine.

Other places mentioned in the Tentative List submission for inclusion at the World Heritage nomination stage, which will be developed in 25/26, include:

Ballarat Historic Urban Landscape

Beechworth Historic Township and Sluicing Landscape

Whroo and the Balaclava Open Cut Mine.

It’s also possible that other locations not mentioned in the above will also be included.

Over the next weeks and months we will be monitoring this, getting different points of view and presenting a conclusion. We will be discussing this subject further on our weekly live shows. If you have something to comment on this matter please reply to this email.