Eldorado, Victoria

Gold was found in the area during the 1850s, the source of the town's name (after the legend of El Dorado). Eldorado Post Office opened on 1 August 1861. Today it has a population around 300.
The town's population declined sharply after the area ceased to yield gold. The remains of an old gold dredge can still be seen today. It was designed and built by Thompson's Engineering for the Cocks Eldorado Gold Dredging Company in 1935-36. By the time it was decommissioned it had dredged 30 million cubic metres from the river flats of the Eldorado Plain. It has 110 digging buckets each of which was capable of digging and lifting 0.3 cubic metres of soil.
Points of Interest: Eldorado Dredge (1935); hut of Kelly Gang police informer Aaron Sherritt; Kelly Cave; Police Cave; Wartime charcoal pits; site of the McEvoy gold mine, Eldorado, and the Eldorado mining disaster of 1895; gem fossicking sites (smoky quartz, agate, Amethysts, Topaz, Citrine, Rock Crystal, jasper, Corundum, sapphires, Zircon, Rubies, tourmalines, Garnets, Diamonds, Alluvial gold and petrified wood)