Promoting Mt Pleasant’s past

NEW historic signage at the Mt Pleasant Reserve was unveiled on Thursday.

The marker is the culmination of the Discover Historic Mount Pleasant project undertaken the area’s history group, Ballarat East Neighbourhood House and the City of Ballarat.

The production and installation of signs at significant historic sites in the area is the key focus of the scheme.

Max Duthie, the Mt Pleasant History Group’s President said the Reserve’s signboard details a place once described as ‘a pleasant place for a tent town’.

“It is the site where Cornish miners set up a town, a church and a school all under canvas on their arrival to the Ballarat goldfields in 1855,” Mr Duthie said. “The Mt Pleasant reserve was originally the place the miners brought their families to settle.

“As devout Wesleyan Methodists they wanted to escape, what they considered to be, the morally unsuitable area of Main Road.”

Kate Owen, Acting Manager at Ballarat East Neighbourhood House said each of the placards in the project feature information and photographs of that particular historic site.

“However, this one unveiled at the Reserve and the one in Pearce’s Park also feature a map and a description of all 20 historic sites across Mt Pleasant,” she said.

Ms Owen, at the unveiling ceremony acknowledged the research undertaken voluntarily by Dr. Bill Garner and the design layout created by Peter Lambert.

“We are delighted that this project has achieved the group’s vision to tell the story of the early days of Mt Pleasant,” Mr Duthie said.