Old Treasury Building

The Old Treasury Building is widely regarded as one of the finest 19th century buildings in Australia....

..... And it was designed by a 19 year old!!

This should be on your list as one of the top Melbourne tourist attractions to visit........

........As well as being a gorgeous building, it contains the original gold vaults where the gold bullion was stored during the gold rush in the 1860's.

The vaults are now home to a very good multimedia exhibition about the gold.

There's a lot of quality information about Melbourne for you to see.........

.......You can walk through rooms containing an exhibition about the caretaker and his family of 8 children who lived here between 1916 and 1928.......

.....you can read stories relating to indigenous Victorians.......

.......learn about Melbourne criminals.......

....... find out about the Women's suffragette movement.......

........and have a look at some rare and historic documents highlighting key moments from Victoria's history.

You'll come across a copy of the largest gold nugget ever found in the world - 'The Welcome Stranger'.....

.....It was found just 25 centimetres beneath the ground in Victoria, not too far from Bendigo.

There's also a copy of 'The Welcome Nugget', found in Ballarat, Victoria.....

.....It was the largest nugget until 'The Welcome Stranger' was found.

They also have temporary exhibitions here. The one I saw was about the West Gate Bridge collapse which occurred 40 years ago......

.....I hadn't known anything about this until I went to the Police Museum recently........

.........I was amazed that something like this happened in a place like Melbourne.

The photo below shows the Old Treasury was one of the earliest buildings in Melbourne. (You'll get a clearer picture of it at the exhibition!!).

Don't call the Old Treasury a museum by the way!....

..... As I was leaving I said to the lady behind the counter that it was a really good museum. "It is not a museum" she replied huffily....

...Oops!.... Make your own mind up!

The Old Treasury is located at 20 Spring Street, just down from Parliament House.

View Old Treasury Building in a larger map

It's normally open Sun-Fri 10am-4pm, closed Saturdays but times do seem to vary so check out the website beforehand at Old Treasury.

Return from Old Treasury Building to Rainy Day Things

Return from Old Treasury to Free-Things-To-Do-Melbourne Homepage