ABSTRACT
Sovereign Hill outdoor heritage museum has received numerous national and state tourism awards for its innovative presentation of the gold rush period and as a best practice attraction based on mining. It has grown to occupy, quite intensively, a site of 64 acres. It attracts an estimated 560,000 visitors annually. International tourists account for approximately 28 per cent of visitors and intra state arrivals represent 60 per cent of all visits (Sovereign Hill, 2007). Its host city of Ballarat, as the place of Australia’s only civil uprising (the Eureka rebellion), has an enviable reputation as one of Australia’s most richly endowed heritage cities. Sovereign Hill tells the story of Ballarat’s mid-nineteenth century gold rush boom.
