Beechworth Historic Courthouse
Home to heroes and villains
The Beechworth Courthouse is perfect for tours by school students of all ages. Using language children can readily understand, our expert historians bring to life some of the dramatic events which took place inside these walls, including the trial which sealed Ned Kelly’s fate as well as the process of trials and the punishment meted out to those found guilty.
A highlight of the Courthouse tours are the costumed trial re-enactments based on actual court transcripts. Students have the chance to play the role of judge, juror, lawyers and even Ned Kelly himself.
Built in 1858 and in continuous service for 131 years, the Beechworth Courthouse has been the setting for some of the most fascinating court cases in Victoria’s history.
One of Australia’s oldest museums, Beechworth’s Burke Museum boasts a fascinating and historically significant collection of more than 30,000 individual items, many dating back to its establishment more than 150 years ago and some linked to famous and infamous figures of history such as Ned Kelly, Dame Nellie Melba and of course, the museum’s namesake, Robert O’Hara Burke.
The Burke is a must-see for school groups of all ages. Students are given a short introduction to the Museum and a ‘seek and find’ sheet that takes them on a self guided tour of the amazing collections. These include the extensive collection of Aboriginal artefacts purchased from R.E. Johns in 1868 which is of major national cultural significance. It is one of the oldest and most comprehensive single collections of its type surviving in the 21st Century and comprises 96 items, including finely crafted and richly decorated wooden weapons, digging sticks and baskets. The artefacts are considered to be important early examples of eaponry/objects, some in use prior to European contact showing the great skill of the Aboriginal craftsmen using pre-European technologies and materials.
Lazy Harry at the Robert O’Hara Burke Memorial Museum Tour groups visiting Beechworth can now enjoy the talents of one of Australia’s most successful singers, raconteurs and recording artists in the unique surrounds of the Burke Museum’s Street of Shops.
Lazy Harry, alias Mark Stephens, is available daily for 45-minute seated performances of his original Australian folk songs and bush ballads in this fantastic venue.
Telegraph Station
Beechworth’s home of Morse Code
Built in 1858, the Telegraph Station, one of a suite of beautifully preserved Gold Era buildings which make up the Beechworth Historic & Cultural Precinct, once linked the town to the outside world through the medium of Morse Code.
This revolutionary new communications tool was the internet of its day, enabling fast delivery of messages and news, including famously, the Kelly Gang siege at Glenrowan transmitted from this building.
Today, the building remains one of the busiest telegraph offices in the world, supported by the international Morse Code Fraternity. With the help of our Morse Code experts, visitors to the building can still send telegraphic messages anywhere in Australia or overseas using this early system of electronic communication.
Powder Magazine
Blasting through granite to gold Built in 1859 and restored by the National Trust in 1966, this amazing building should be included in your school’s Beechworth itinerary.
Built of solid, buttressed granite, with a slate roof and surrounded by a high stone wall, the Powder Magazine was used as a storage room for large amounts of gunpowder used in mining and quarrying. By law, miners were required to leave bulk gunpowder in this building
overnight.
Designed so that any explosion would be directed upwards rather than outwards, the
safety features built into the Powder Magazine, such as wooden nails, lightning rod and solid outer wall can still be viewed today.
Visitor Information Services and the Town Hall
Echoes of History in Beechworth
No tour of Beechworth’s Historic & Cultural Precinct is complete without a visit to the beautiful Town Hall building which today houses the Beechworth Visitor Information Centre.
The VIC’s expert and friendly team will help with all your tour needs including advice on planning group itineraries as well as accommodation bookings. The VIC is well stocked with maps, information about a host of local attractions including walking tours, horse riding, abseiling, gold-panning, gem-fossicking, mountain-bike riding, 4WD possibilities and trail-bike riding. Enquiries can also be made here relating to local tour operators. The VIC also stocks postcards and a range of souvenirs to suit all tastes and pockets.
Screening regularly throughout the day in the Town Hall is the excellent short film, Echoes of History. Running for a little over 10 minutes, this informative and educational video is a great introduction to your group’s Precinct experience. It brings to life the history of Beechworth through the eyes of well-known local identities and touches on the influence of squatters and bushrangers and issues of law and order, multiculturalism and government in a short and action-packed presentation.
Discover Ned Kelly and Beechworth’s golden history
Guided walking tours
Discover Ned Kelly and Beechworth’s golden history
Beechworth’s Historic & Cultural Precinct offers two informative and entertaining hour-long guided walking tours every day of the week which are perfect for both adult and school groups and suitable for all ages and abilities.
Led by our expert local historians through the picturesque streets of this perfectly preserved Gold Era town, the tours are a lively and enjoyable way to learn about Beechworth’s rich and colourful past.
Australia’s most famous bushranger and his links with Beechworth are the focus of the Ned Kelly guided walking tour which departs daily from the Visitor Information Centre at the historic Town Hall, opposite the Courthouse.
Tour groups will see many of the buildings associated with the Kelly legend and hear the stories behind the events which eventually brought the Kelly era to an end. They will learn about Ned Kelly’s mother, Ellen, sentenced at Beechworth Courthouse to three years hard labour for ‘aiding and abetting Edward Kelly in the murder of Constable Fitzpatrick’. Walking tours also visit Harry Powers’ Cell where the ‘Gentleman Bushranger’ and mentor to a young Ned Kelly spent many months on remand and they will learn how the Kelly Gang made the armour they wore at the Last Stand at Glenrowan.
The fascinating Gold Rush guided walking tour, which also departs from the Visitor Information Centre, tells the story of the Gold Rushes of the 1850s in Beechworth, once the richest alluvial goldfield in Victoria with some four million ounces – in today’s money worth billions of dollars - extracted from the area during the height of the boom. Visitors will discover the story of the amazing Rocky Mountain Tunnel which runs beneath Beechworth as well as stories of everyday life for the miners who came with dreams of striking it rich.
Also suitable for school groups or adults, the tour visits many of the buildings associated with governance on the goldfields as well as the Gold Era commercial buildings still operating today.
These educational, informative and highly entertaining tours offer the perfect opportunity for school students and adult groups to experience first hand the fascinating stories behind of one of Australia’s best-preserved historical towns.
Price List & Booking Sheet To make a booking for the Beechworth Historic & Cultural Precinct, tours or activities simply down load our booking sheet and fax to the Beechworth Visitor Information Centre.
Pat's Town Tours
Professional historian Pat Doyle will amaze you with his passion about Beechworth’s golden history.
Pat talks about the important significance of
The discovery of gold in 1852
Beechworth Cemetery & Chinese Burning Towers
Beechworth Historic & Cultural Precinct buildings
The Old Beechworth Goal
Local legends, Sir Isaac Isaacs, Robert O’Hara Burke & Ned Kelly
