Built on Gold

The Old Treasury Building was erected as a storage facility for the Victorian Gold Rush.

While the upstairs rooms are grandly proportioned and furnished, they sit upon a number of gold vaults.

Its construction was funded by massive government revenues flowing from the central Victorian goldfields. Its purpose was two-fold to provide government offices, and to house the colony's stock of gold bullion.

You can tour the vaults which are now set up with multimedia displays on different themes tracing the journey of the gold from the diggings and its impact on the state - the Gold Escorts, shipping & trade, colonial bureaucracy, the gold rush in Melbourne, and the gold market, etc.