Bendigo City Centre Heritage Study

Heritage Study

City of Greater Bendigo

VIC

The city centre of Bendigo is a place rich in layered history from Aboriginal occupation of the area through the gold rushes to agricultural and manufacturing industry and the development of a significant commercial centre.

The city centre still reflects many of these activities in its physical and spatial settings. The City Centre Heritage Study included a Thematic History of the city as a cultural landscape, weaving together a number of sources about the commercial, civic and industrial development. The study assembled documentation on the various textile industries that flourished in the post-war era, agricultural processing and transport industries.

A new understanding of the city centre and its evolution was a key component of this study, culminating in a revised precinct citation encompassing the area from Barnard Street in the west to Lyttleton Street in the east. Several new smaller precincts were assessed and a number of individual places. The study contributes a new understanding of the development of Bendigo, particularly during the twentieth century.