Prehistory and European settlement
Prior to the European settlement of Australia, the Ballarat region was populated by the Wathaurong people, an Indigenous Australian people. The Boro gundidj tribe's territory was based along the Yarrowee River.
The first Europeans to sight the area were an 1837 party of six mostly Scottish squatters from Geelong led by Somerville Learmonth who were in search of land less affected by the severe drought for their sheep to graze. The party scaled Mount Buninyong, among them were Somerville's brother Thomas Livingstone Learmonth, William Cross Yuille and Henry Anderson all three of which later claimed land in what is now Ballarat.
The Yuille family, Scottish settlers Archibald Buchanan Yuille and his brother William Cross Yuille arrived in 1837 and squatted a 10,000-acre (40 km) sheep run. The first houses were built near Woolshed Creek by William Yuille and Anderson (Sebastopol), while Yuille erected a hut Black Swamp (Lake Wendouree) in 1838. Outsiders originally knew of the settlement as Yuille's Station and Yuille's Swamp. Archibald Yuille named the area "Ballaarat" which it is thought he derived from local Wathaurong Aboriginal words for the area, balla arat. The meaning of this word is not certain, however several translations have been made and it is generally thought to mean 'resting place'. In some dialects, balla means "bent elbow" which is translated to mean reclining or resting and arat meaning "place".
1850s: Gold rush
The first publicised discovery of gold in the region was by Thomas Hiscock in 2 August 1851 in the Buninyong region to the south. The find brought other prospectors to the area and on 19 August 1851, John Dunlop and James Regan struck gold at Poverty Point with a few ounces. Within days of the announcement of Dunlop and Reagan's find a gold rush began, thousands of prospectors to the Yarrowee valley which became known as the Ballarat diggings. Yields were
