WHEN WAGNER PREMIERED HIS EPIC in Bayreuth in 1876, another story about the powerful lure of gold was playing out in the Australian city of Bendigo, almost 16,000 km away in the Southern Hemisphere. Then known as Sandhurst until it reverted to the locale’s original name in 1891, it was deemed “the richest city in the world,” the result of the discovery of huge goldfields in 1851. Located about 155 km north of Melbourne, the gold rush transformed Bendigo from a sprawling, squalid mining encampment into a proper Victorian city with imposing public buildings and a rich social and economic life. Trappings of the English motherland may have set the overall tone, but the population was diverse. Germans made up one of the most important ethnic groups, their expertise and influence central to everything from mining to viniculture, commerce to construction. Some of the most impressive period buildings still standing are the work of architect William Vahland, who migrated from near Hanover in 1854 to find gold but made his fortune capitalizing on the community wealth it generated.
