150 years at the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute

Join Phil Roberts as he shares some of the fascinating details captured in Under Minerva’s Gaze. If you like a good story with a happy ending you will also be delighted by the efforts of recent Committees to raise money to restore the heritage building.

The BMI now shines out among the icons that testify to Ballarat’s position as a prize creation of Victorian democracy. As the editor of the Ballarat Courier wrote in 1890:

The gentlemen who have made their fortunes in mining or other pursuits all seemed imbued with the one spirit, that of adding to the beauty of the Golden City…having asmassed wealth here (they) have the good old Ballarat spirit to spend some of their superfluity for the benefit of the town. If the successful men of the metropolis showed proportionate generosity and public spiritedness, the Victorian capital would be ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ indeed. (source: Under Minerva’s Gaze – editors Jill Blee & Phil Roberts).