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A self-guided audio walking tour of central Ballarat, on Wadawurrung country, along Sturt Street, up Lydiard Street to the railway station, back by Camp Street to Bakery Hill, and out to the Eureka Stockade site. It starts at St Patrick's Cathedral, on a site chosen in 1853, and follows Sturt Street past the statue of Peter Lalor, leader at the Eureka Stockade, presented in 1893, the Town Hall, Bertram Mackennal's Queen Victoria in Sicilian marble and the Mechanics' Institute. On Lydiard Street it visits Craig's Royal Hotel, Her Majesty's Theatre, opened in 1875 as the Academy of Music, the statue of Robert Burns, Australia's first monument to a poet, the Old Post Office, the Mining Exchange of 1887–89, the Art Gallery and the railway station, begun in 1858. Then Camp Street, where the Government Camp ran the licence hunts that led to Eureka, the Trades Hall of 1887–88, the Gold Discovery Memorial for the finds of 1851, and Bakery Hill, the meeting place where routes converged. The walk ends at the Eureka Stockade Memorial and the Eureka Centre, on the hill held as the site of the stockade of 1854.
18 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 43 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 11 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
St Patrick's Cathedral, Peter Lalor statue, Ballarat Town Hall, Queen Victoria statue, Ballarat Mechanics Institute.
Craig's Royal Hotel, Her Majesty's Theatre, Robert Burns statue, Old Post Office, Former Mining Exchange, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat Railway Station.
Camp Street, Trades Hall, Gold Discovery Memorial, Bakery Hill, Eureka Stockade Memorial, Eureka Centre.
The bronze of the Eureka leader in the middle of Sturt Street, presented to Ballarat on 26 January 1893.
The theatre opened in 1875 as the Academy of Music, built to give the goldfields city a theatre worthy of its standing.
Australia's first monument to a poet, on the site of the 'Loafers Tree' where Sturt and Lydiard Streets meet.
The exchange of 1887–89, built as a formal centre for trading mining shares.
The old Government Camp on its rise above the diggings, from which the police licence hunts were run.
The obelisk and four cannons in Eureka Stockade Gardens, on ground associated with the stockade of 1854.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 18 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 18 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Ballarat — Lydiard Street, Sturt Street and Eureka, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
18 narration points, including St Patrick's Cathedral, Peter Lalor statue, Ballarat Town Hall, Queen Victoria statue and Ballarat Mechanics Institute. That is about 26 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~2–3 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 18 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.