MINER'S COTTAGE

The former single storey timber weatherboard miner's cottage at 498-500 High Street dates at least to the early 1870s when a house and store were listed in 1873 to the ownership of Miller and Packwood. The property is sited on the banks of the Adelaide Creek, now a channel, a few metres from the junction with Bendigo Creek near Christmas line of reef, which crosses the highway at an angle towards Speck Gully and Specimen Hill to the north. Almost from the beginning of the alluvial rush in Bendigo the small gullies such as Golden, Tin Pot, Adelaide, Kangaroo and others, supported sizable mining populations.1 The whole of the creek bed and associated branches were upturned during the 1850s in search of gold. By the 1850s and 1860s various Chinese camps along the creek had developed into minor villages generating market gardens. However, increasing development of quartz mining in the 1860s took the mining community away from the creeks. The apexes of the hills were the places where the quartz reefs were exposed that later mining was most active. It was here that associated working miners built their elevated communities on the shoulders of the hills attracting settlement away from the banks of the creeks.Puddling and reworking of discarded spoil continued for a time in the creek beds. Resulting damage caused by sludge build up was the source of ongoing political recrimination by land owners and the wealthy against the Chinese and single alluvial diggers, and necessitated the conversion of the major creeks into sludge channels to contain spoil from damaging the newly created freeholds in central Bendigo (Sandhurst). From the late 1850s works continued on Bendigo Creek and over the next 30 years an extensive channelization project focussed on the central district along Pall Mall extending to Golden Square. The creek was lined first with hardwood then stone and brick walling, and in due course Bendigo Creek was widened, deepened, undergrounded in sections and in other sections new bridges were built over the channel. Except for outlying areas of Golden Square and Kangaroo Flat, the character of Bendigo Creek was fundamentally altered, leaving no trace of the early alluvial surface mining era.2

The timber weatherboard miner's cottage at 498-500 High Street has historic, architectural and social significance at a local level to the City of Greater Bendigo. 

The former miner's cottage at 498-500 High Street, Golden Square, is historically significant as a good representative example of an early miner's cottage associated with an early shop in 1873 built near the junction of Adelaide and Bendigo Creek along the main highway, Melbourne Road, on the outskirts of the Golden Square settlement. The former miner's cottage at 498-500 High Street, Golden Square, is historically significant for its cultural landscape setting, comprising the original former Miners Residency Area located on the junction of Bendigo and Adelaide Creek. Bendigo Creek was where the first alluvial gold rush was located and where thousands of miners congregated in the early days of Bendigo. The cottage is one of a group of three timber cottages, which are very modest in size typical of miners' cottages, located within a former alluvial mining relic landscape, which can be seen from Melbourne Road, the main highway into Bendigo.

The miner's cottage at 498-500 High Street, Golden Square, is associated with one of the unique features of the Victorian goldfields- the Miners Residency Area. It is one of a group of increasingly rare structures on the Bendigo goldfields and in particular the former Bendigo and Adelaide Creek area that clearly illustrate the typical construction, design and layout of a timber weatherboard miner's cottage. The area along Bendigo Creek between Golden Square and Kangaroo Flat with its associated creeks such as Adelaide Creeks has heritage significance for its rare and poignant historic landscape of the early gold rush on the Bendigo field. The cultural landscape shows archaeological evidence of early alluvial mining works, which together with the one or two remaining mining cottages such as that at 498-500 High Street, built along the banks of the gullies are associated with small time diggers and Chinese miners, who engaged in alluvial gold mining, market gardening and small trading along the Melbourne Road leading out of Bendigo (Sandhurst).

The house at 498-500 High Street, Golden Square, is an excellent representative example of miner's cottage particularly associated with Bendigo Creek and Adelaide Creek gold mining era that development during the early alluvial gold rush period. It is associated with one of the key elements of the historical fabric of Victorian goldfields, the working miner's cottage. It is a historical and architectural record of one of the earliest types and designs of miners' cottage that developed in response to the opportunities that the gold rush provided.

1 Birrel, R. W. And J. A. Lerk, Bendigo's Golden Story, 2001, p 59

2 Eaglehawk and Bendigo Heritage Study, Butler, 1993, City of Greater Bendigo