Sovereign Hill is an old gold prospector's museum town, located 110 kilometres from Melbourne. It recreates to the smallest detail the life of Australian citizens of the "gold rush" times: vintage carriages rumble through the streets, ladies flaunt 19th-century dresses, and in the saloons whiskey and beer are drunk by dashing hunters and beer, dashing fortune hunters who have flocked to the "green" continent from all corners of the world. The gold found here in 1851 changed the history of the country forever - the population tripled in a matter of years, cities and industry began to grow cities and industry.
In the mid-19th century, the small town of Sovereign Hill in the Ballart Hills - where one of the largest gold veins in the world was discovered. The town grew: shops and craftsmen opened, new prospectors arrived, bringing their wives and children with them, or starting families locally. In almost 50 years, 650 tonnes of gold were mined here, but by the early 20th century the deposit and with it Sovereign Hill began to wither, becoming one of Australia's many of Australia's many ghost towns.
The new "old" life of the town began in 1970, when it was decided to open an open-air museum to preserve the old buildings and recreate the atmosphere of the glory years. Today, Sovereign Hill is home to about 300 residents, who reproduce the lifestyle of their mid-19th century ancestors. The town has a school, a theatre, a bank, a post office and a printing office. Craftsmen using old-fashioned techniques make metal crockery, candles, horseshoes, furniture, all of which can be bought in souvenir shops. Tourists can also visit the mine, where gold was once mined, to see how ingots are cast or to mint their own coin. Or you can try your luck in a gold-bearing creek and try your luck to wash up some gold dust as a souvenir.
There is an underground exhibition in Sovereign Hill about the disaster at the Kreshuik mine in 1882, when the mine collapsed and flooded, killing 22 people. The accident is still considered Australia's largest accident in the mining sector.
