CULTURE FIX

51 BALLARAT REINVENTED

I’m in the basement bar of a contemporary art gallery that used to be a masonic temple. It serves cocktails made with pine foraged from a nearby forest and is styled with eclectic furnishings foraged from Gumtree. On another evening I might have caught a film screening, a ‘Draw the Nude Man’ life drawing class or a gin-blending workshop with local distillers, but tonight I’m just hanging out with the resident cat Pye and enjoying the atmosphere. Four years ago, Tara Poole fell in love with this building when it was an empty shell full of little more than history and potential. She had no precedent for taking on such a task, but through passion, hard work and learning how to angle grind, she transformed it into the Lost Ones Gallery and Bar.

It’s the kind of enterprising spirit I encounter throughout Ballarat, where a new generation of creators, artisans and makers are forging their city’s future by tapping into its rich cultural legacy that dates back to its heyday, and further back still – but more on that later. The gold rush brought with it a creative wave: as the town transitioned into an industrial-age city in the late 19th century, trades like leather-making, blacksmithing and woodsmithing flourished; foundries and flour mills popped up all over town. A literary and debating tradition earned the Victorian city the nickname ‘the Athens of Australia’ and the country’s first purpose-built regional art gallery,