History of Bendigo
 Before European settlement, the area covered by todays City of Greater Bendigo was occupied by the clans of the Dja Dja Wrung people. They were regarded by other tribes as being a superior people, not only because of their rich hunting grounds but because from their area came a greenstone rock for their stone axes. Early Europeans described the Dja Dja Wrung as a strong, physically well-developed people and not belligerent. Nevertheless the early years of European settlement in the Mount Alexander area were bloodied by many clashes between intruder and dispossessed.
Following the footsteps of explorer Major Mitchell, the Victorian countryside was opened up by squatters who established vast sheep runs. Bendigo Creek was part of the Mount Alexander or Ravenswood sheep run.
The name of Bendigo Creek derives from an employee of the Mount Alexander Run, an ex-sailor or bullock driver who was handy with his fists and nicknamed Bendigo after the Nottingham prize-fighter, William Abednego Thompson, generally known as Bendigo Thompson. Bendigo Creek was named after him, and the Bendigo Goldfield after the creek.
In the late spring of 1851 two women from the Ravenswood Run, Margaret Kennedy and Julia Farrell, found gold in The Rocks area of Bendigo Creek, in what is now the suburb of Golden Square. They were seen with gold by a journalist who reported what he saw to Melbourne and the rush to Bendigo started.
The Post Office opened on 1 July 1852 as Bendigo Creek (the first Victorian post office to open in a goldmining settlement), was renamed Sandhurst in 1854 and Bendigo in 1891.[4]
In 1853 there was a massive protest march by surface miners against the amount of the gold licence fee and the frequency with which it was collected. This protest, the Red Ribbon Agitation, was peaceful (unlike the later Eureka event in Ballarat) because of the ability of the miners\' leaders and the young Scots Police Commissioner, Joseph Anderson Panton.
Numerous pit mines later exploited the underground ores which are found in elongated saddle quartz reefs in corrugated sedimentary rock. Since 1851 over 22 million ounces of gold have been won from Bendigos goldmines, making it the largest goldfield in Australia in the nineteenth century and still the largest in Eastern Australia.
Pall Mall in 1861
Although the goldfield was always known as Bendigo, the first official name was Castleton, which was quickly replaced by Sandhurst, after the British military establishment Sandhurst. The city was not officially called Bendigo until 1891.
Bendigo quickly grew from a city of tents to become a substantial city with great public buildings. The first town plan was developed by 1854. Bendigo was connected to Melbourne by telegraph in 1857 and it was from here that the first message reporting the deaths of Burke and Wills was sent in 1861. Frequent Cobb & Co coaches ran to Melbourne until the railway reached Bendigo in 1862. Local trams began in 1890 and were used for public transport until 1972, after which a tourist tram service began on one of the lines.
Lithograph of central Sandhurst and Pall Mall from above in 1884
The first Town Hall was commissioned in 1859 and from 1878 to 1886 the architect William Charles Vahland transformed it into a grand building which has recently been restored internally, with its ornate plasterwork gilded with gold leaf. Vahland designed over eighty public and private buildings, including the Alexandra Fountain, the Masonic Temple (now the Capital Theatre) and the Mechanics Institute and School of Mines (now the Bendigo Regional Institute of TAFE). The first hospital was built in 1853, with a new building on its present site established in 1858, designed by Vahland. The Bendigo Benevolent Asylum, now known as the Anne Caudle Centre, was erected in 1860. Other substantial buildings in Bendigo include Fortuna Villa in Golden Square, (which was the home of Quartz King George Lansell), the Law Courts, former Post Office (now the Visitor Information Centre) and the Shamrock Hotel in Pall Mall.
Water supply was always a problem in Bendigo. This was partly solved with a system harnessing the waters of the Coliban River, designed by engineer Joseph Brady. Water first flowed through the viaduct in 1877. Bendigo is entitled to a portion of the water in Lake Eppalock, an irrigation reservoir on the Campaspe River. Recent developments have led to the building of a pipeline from Waranga to Lake Eppalock and thence to Bendigo in 2007.
Pall  Mall and Charing Cross in 1909. Bendigo had become a bustling city with a large transport network.
Bendigo has always been famous for its singers, musicians, brass bands and sports men and women, and boasts one of the finest regional Art Galleries (1887) in Australia, as well as a Performing Arts Centre. There was and continues to be a significant Chinese presence in Bendigo, starting with the gold rush and evident today in the Golden Dragon Museum and in the Easter Fair, which started in 1871.
As gold mining operations were reduced, Bendigo from the 1930s consolidated as a manufacturing and regional service centre and continued to grow steadily.
Bendigo was affected by the Black Saturday bushfires. A fire to the west of the city burned out 500 hectares (1,200 acres).[5] The fire broke out at about 4.30 pm on the afternoon of 7 February, and burned through Long Gully and Eaglehawk, coming within 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) of central Bendigo, before it was brought under control late on 8 February.[5] It destroyed approximately 58 houses in Bendigo\'s western suburbs, and damaged an electricity transmission line, resulting in blackouts to substantial parts of the city.[6] There was one fatality from the fire. |
Bendigo\'s 
The main retail centre of Bendigo is the central business district, with the suburbs of Eaglehawk, Kangaroo Flat, Golden Square, Strathdale and Epsom also having shopping districts.