Hamilton Gallery

Australia’s regional galleries hold rich collections that demonstrate a powerful communal need to collect and display art. Victoria’s regional cities, in particular, are notably well endowed with public art collections and handsome buildings to house them. The gold rush towns were at the forefront in establishing public art galleries: the first, in Ballarat, was founded in 1884; Bendigo followed in 1887. There are now nineteen of them fairly evenly positioned across the state – between one and six hours’ drive from Melbourne – from Warrnambool (1886) in the south-west and Mildura (1956) in the north-west to Bairnsdale (1992) to the east.