VICMining
Eaglehawk
A gully rush that became a borough of its own.
1852Gold rush reaches Eaglehawk Gully
WHAT STARTED IT
The gold-bearing ground around Bendigo ran several kilometres north-west, and finds at Eaglehawk, California Gully and Sailors Gully in 1852 drew thousands of diggers. The town grew where High Street splits into the roads to Sailors Gully and Pegleg Gully.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
Alluvial digging gave way to deep quartz-reef mining, and Eaglehawk became a separate municipality in 1862 and a borough the next year, later a railway junction with a mechanics’ institute, botanic park and grand primary school. Mining employment fell away after 1900, and the borough’s population more than halved between 1901 and 1933.
TURNING POINTS
1852Gold finds at Eaglehawk, California Gully and Sailors Gully spark a rush north-west of Bendigo.
1854Town lots are surveyed and sold along High Street, and a National school opens.
1862Eaglehawk is proclaimed a municipal district on 29 July; it becomes a borough in 1863.
1876The railway from Bendigo to Inglewood opens on 17 November, with a station at Eaglehawk.
1994Eaglehawk borough is united with Bendigo and neighbouring shires to form the City of Greater Bendigo.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A residential suburb in the north-west of urban Bendigo, joined to Greater Bendigo in 1994. Its well-kept civic precinct, poppet heads and miners’ cottages still show the separate gold town it once was.