Home > Castlemaine, Victoria

Street in Castlemaine. The Burke and Wills memorial can just be seen at the top of the hill

Castlemaine is a town in Victoria, Australia, in the "Midlands" region about 120 kilometres northwest by road from Melbourne, and about 40 kilometres from the major provincial centre of Bendigo. It has a population of 6,835 (2001 census data), of whom about 8% were born overseas (mostly in the United Kingdom) and 2% of whom speak a language other than English, a pattern typical of much of rural Australia.

It was established during the gold rush of 1851 and was originally named Forest Creek. The name was later changed to Mount Alexander, but the chief goldfield commissioner, Captain W. Wright , renamed the settlement to honour his uncle, Viscount Castlemaine . The old name is still present in the name of a major Melbourne thoroughfare, Mount Alexander Road, which before the establishment of the Calder Freeway was the route to Castlemaine.

After gold mining gradually ceased a number of other secondary industries sprang up. The largest was established in 1905 as the Castlemaine Bacon Company, producing smallgoods . The company is still the area's largest single employer with around 750 employees there. Tourism exploring the gold-rush era buildings, and other attractions including an art gallery featuring a number of fine Heidelberg School works, is also a major source of income for the town.