Diggers Rest Median PriceThe House price is 2% higher than last year.
Surrounding suburbsDiggers Rest Median RentThe House rent is 11% higher than last year.
| | Map | Street view | Nearby property price | | Planning History: | | | Registered as Victorian heritage | The Diggers Rest Hotel, at 1434-1466 Calder Highway, Diggers Rest, constructed in 1854, is significant as one of the few Mount Alexander Road goldrush wayside hotels known to survive, and the only known surviving example of the many wayside hotels that were established between towns during the goldrush. Architecturally, the original Victorian building has been compromised by additions, primarily during the interwar period. Historically, these same additions also demonstrated the revival of the Mount Alexander Road as a competitor to rail transport with the advent of the motor car, a far-reaching transformation which almost certainly saved the hotel from demolition.
The Diggers Rest Hotel, at 1434-1466 Calder Highway, is architecturally significant at a LOCAL level (AHC D.2). Although recently burnt and now in a ruinous state, it still demonstrates nineteenth century and interwar design qualities. The nineteenth century qualities include the composition of the massive two storey rough stone and brick walls the chamfered corner, , single window openings and main entrance doorway. The interwar qualities include the shallow-pitched gambrel roof form, broad eaves, and the timber framed window and door openings on the ground floor, and the two side additions.
The Diggers Rest Hotel, at 1434-1466 Calder Highway, is of historical significance at a LOCAL level (AHC A.4, B.2)as a rare wayside hotel associated with one of the most dazzling goldrushes in world history, and with Australia's largest goldrush. Wayside hotels are expressive of a major phenomenon of the goldrush event - unforgettable for its participants - of the trip to the diggings. The throng that pushed up Mount Alexander Road in the early 1850s was of historic proportions, and often exposed to major hardships and dangers. Wayside hotels were the most significant type of place on this road, in terms of their number (an average of about one every three kilometres on the dry Keilor Plains); their grandeur; and their associations with the colourful days of the early goldrush (including the sheer scale of the traffic, bushranging, bullockies, and Cobb & Co staging posts). At the time these hotels, including the two-storey masonry Diggers Rest Hotel, were the grandest and most dominant type of building in the rural parts of the colony. They were typically distinguished from town and goldfields hotels by their incorporation of a blacksmith for cart repair, and large stables.
The Diggers Rest Hotel is one of few surviving Mount Alexander Road goldrush wayside hotels, and an even rarer example of a purpose-built (early 1850s) goldrush wayside hotel. It is the only known surviving intermediary (situated between towns) goldrush wayside hotel on the road. It is also set apart by having been one of the few hotels identified in goldrush-era maps as a waymark of the journey to the Mount Alexander goldfields. Its undeveloped and relativ |
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