Lighting a gen'rous, manly flame: the nostalgia for “dear old Bendigo”

Abstract

Bendigo is the name of an Australian city with a golden past, an historic reserve centred on a Central Otago ghost town, a Pennsylvanian State Park, and a former All-England champion boxer. The name Bendigo appears on hotel signs, gold dredges and mining claims in several countries, and on the nameplate of a Confederate blockade runner wrecked off North Carolina. More than merely an example of an early global brand, Bendigo acquired a peculiar significance throughout narratives of colonial Australasia with the town remembered in an unusually rapid, unique nostalgiacising process. This article examines the way the name developed and the manner in which the Australian Bendigo emerged through legend, memory, and pioneering mythology to become an assiduously romanticised “Old Bendigo” and how this influenced the perception of people from that town.