Canadian

About Canadian

Canadian is a residential suburb of Ballarat, Victoria, about three kilometres south-east of the city centre, in the heart of the Ballarat goldfields. It takes its name from the rich Canadian gold lead, worked from the early 1850s and reputedly named after a digger known as Canadian Swift. A rush at Canadian Gully in 1852 was followed in January 1853 by the discovery of three huge nuggets, each weighing more than 1,000 ounces, and an area of the deep lead known as the Jewellers' Shop yielded over a ton of gold. The suburb grew slowly as a mining community, with a post office from 1886 to 1988, and urban settlement spread to the area from the 1980s. Its eastern bushland now forms part of Woowookarung Regional Park.