Best Family Activities in Ballarat: Sovereign Hill, Wildlife Park and the Goldfields

Ballarat is one of Australia's most outstanding family destinations for history, wildlife and outdoor experience, built around the extraordinary living history museum of Sovereign Hill and a concentration of accessible attractions in the goldfields landscape. Sovereign Hill on Bradshaw Street is Australia's best living history museum and one of the most highly rated family attractions in the country, where visitors walk through a recreation of an 1850s gold rush town with costumed interpreters, actual gold panning in the creek, a mine tour, a hotel, school and bakery all in operation as they would have been during the gold rush. Blood on the Southern Cross, a sound-and-light show at Sovereign Hill depicting the Eureka Stockade uprising, operates nightly. The Ballarat Wildlife Park on York Street is a privately operated wildlife park with free-roaming kangaroos, wombats, Tasmanian devils, crocodiles and the largest captive collection of native Australian reptiles in the world. Lake Wendouree adjacent to the Botanic Gardens is Ballarat's most used recreation area, with rowing, cycling and the historic tram ride that operates on weekends. The Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka on Eureka Street has the original Eureka Flag and interactive exhibits on democracy and the Eureka Stockade. Sovereign Hill also operates Aura, a large-scale projection mapping experience.