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Ballaarat

proper noun

  1. 1.The city’s name as its council had it, from the Municipal District of Ballaarat, proclaimed on 18 December 1855, to the City of Ballaarat, abolished on 6 May 1994.
  2. 2.From the Wadawurrung words balla and arat. The usual reading is a resting place; the oldest, from 1866, is “to recline on the elbow”.
“It was a gathering place for both Wadawurrung people and animals that moved off the grassy plains to shelter during winter.”
Bryon Powell, Wadawurrung Elder, 2015

The years

The dates of proclamation are the Government Gazette’s own. The pictures are the State Library’s and the Public Record Office’s, each cropped to where the word was written.

  1. The Yuille brothers take up a run they call Ballarat Station. Whether they wrote one a or two isn’t known: no paper of theirs with the name on it has been found.

  2. Gold is found at Buninyong, then at Poverty Point on 19 August.

  3. At a meeting of about ten thousand on Bakery Hill, the diggers adopt the charter of the Ballarat Reform League, written with one a, as the League’s posters are. The government writes two: on its survey maps that year, and in the Gazette of 6 December, three days after the Eureka Stockade, lifting the martial law it had laid on “the Gold Fields of Ballaarat”.

    Handwritten: “11th 1854 the following were adopted as the principles and objects of the ‘Ballarat Reform League’”, on blue paper
    Ballarat Reform League charter, 1854. Public Record Office Victoria, VPRS 4066/P0000/1
    AT BALLAARAT in shadowed title capitals, over “Lithographed at the Surveyor General’s Office, March 27 1854”
    Suburban and country lands of Ballaarat, Surveyor-General’s Office, 1854. State Library Victoria

  4. The Surveyor-General’s office maps the Electoral District of Ballaarat.

    ELECTORAL DISTRICT OF BALLAARAT, in a map’s title lettering
    Electoral district of Ballaarat, lithographed by R. Meikle, 1855. State Library Victoria

  5. The Municipal District of Ballaarat is proclaimed: signed on the 17th and gazetted on the 18th, though the 10th is the date most often given.

  6. Ballaarat East is proclaimed a municipality of its own, at the petition of “the landowners and householders of Ballaarat East”.

  7. DeGruchy and Leigh print the Mining District of Ballaarat.

    Mining District of Ballaarat, in engraved ornamental lettering
    Mining district of Ballaarat, DeGruchy & Leigh, 1859. State Library Victoria

  8. The News Letter of Australasia prints an engraving of the town from Bakery Hill.

    BALLAARAT, FROM BAKERY HILL, printed under an engraving
    Ballaarat, from Bakery Hill, wood engraving, 1862. State Library Victoria

  9. At the Australian Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne, the town’s exhibit hangs its name over its cases.

    A painted sign reading BALLAARAT over exhibition cases
    View of display cases and part of the Ballarat exhibit, Thomas Ellis & Co., 1866–7. State Library Victoria

  10. The Governor proclaims “the Borough of Ballaarat to be a City … designated by the name … THE CITY OF BALLAARAT”. Niven’s mining map of the same year says so across its top.

    NIVEN’S MINING MAP OF BALLAARAT, in the map’s title
    Niven’s mining map of Ballaarat, F. W. Niven & Co., 1870. State Library Victoria

  11. The Phoenix Foundry’s apprentices build a model locomotive for the Juvenile Industrial Exhibition, and Bardwell & Beauchamp photograph it for a card.

    THE PHŒNIX FOUNDRY, BALLAARAT, printed on a card
    Advertising card for the Phoenix Foundry, Bardwell & Beauchamp, about 1878. State Library Victoria

  12. Ballaarat East joins the City: on the 19th by the Public Record Office, the 25th by the council. That same week the Gazette prints “the cities of Ballarat … the towns of Ballarat East”, one a each.

  13. The Department of Lands and Survey’s sheets of the city still carry two.

    BALLAARAT CITY SHEET 9, lettered on a survey map
    Ballaarat City sheet 9, Department of Lands and Survey, 1931. State Library Victoria

  14. On Sturt Street, the gas company’s name is painted on its gable.

    A gable on Sturt Street with a sign reading THE BALLAARAT GAS COMPANY
    Sturt Street looking west, Victorian Railways, about 1945–54. State Library Victoria

  15. The Commonwealth’s maps still name the federal Division of Ballaarat, as they had since at least 1949.

  16. An order in the Gazette abolishes the City of Ballaarat, with the Borough of Sebastopol and the shires around it, and constitutes the City of Ballarat. It takes effect the day it is published.

Still spelt Ballaarat

Four of them are in the city, and the model shows where. Three are not on any map of it.

A model of Ballarat on its own ground: Lake Wendouree to the west, the grid of the central city, the Yarrowee River running down through it, and the hills to the east.Mechanics’ InstituteThe Ballaarat ClubObservatoryKittelty’s
A model of Ballarat on its own ground: Lake Wendouree to the west, the grid of the central city, the Yarrowee River running down through it, and the hills to the east.

  • Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute

    117–119 Sturt Street

    A subscription lending library and heritage venue, founded in 1859. Its mark and its registered name keep both a’s.

    ballaratmi.org.au

  • The Ballaarat Club

    203 Dana Street

    A members’ club founded in 1872, in its own rooms on Dana Street since 1889.

    theballaaratclub.com.au

  • Ballaarat Astronomical Society

    439 Cobden Street, Mount Pleasant

    The volunteers who have run the city’s observatory since 1958. The heritage register calls the building the Ballaarat Municipal Observatory, and the society takes gifts as the Ballaarat Municipal Observatory Museum.

    ballaratobservatory.org.au

  • Kittelty’s Ballaarat

    134 Victoria Street, Ballarat East

    A cake shop in an old corner shop, which calls its own suburb Ballaarat East.

    0427 443 163kitteltys.com.au

  • The Ballaarat District Scouts badge

    On the uniform, not on the map

    BALLAARAT over DISTRICT, Est. 1909: the district now writes Ballarat, and only the badge keeps the old spelling.

  • Ballaarat Park, Pyrmont

    Darling Island Road, Pyrmont, in Sydney

    A small harbour park at the tip of Darling Island, named for the Ballaarat, the first iron-hulled ship built wholly in Australia, built there in 1853.

  • The Ballaarat locomotive

    On show at Railway House, Busselton, in Western Australia

    Built in 1871 at James Hunt’s Victoria Foundry in Ballarat, the first 3 ft 6 in gauge locomotive built in Australia, for Western Australia’s first railway.

On the business register

Names registered with both a’s, most of them trading as Ballarat or not in public at all:

  • Ballaarat Fermentary Pty Ltd
  • Ballaarat Folk Club Inc.
  • Ballaarat Paint Co
  • Ballaarat Performance Association (The Rat Lab) Inc.
  • Ballaarat Property Transfers
  • Crafts Council of Ballaarat Inc.
  • Motorcycle Land Ballaarat
  • Regen Ballaarat Inc., registered on 28 September 2026
  • Storyworks Ballaarat
  • The Ballaarat Ice Cream Shop

Lately lost: the Ballaarat Old and New Cemeteries. The Courier said in 2017 that they still kept the double a. Their trust now writes Ballarat throughout.

For anyone who lives here

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