Golden Dragon Museum — Attraction in Bendigo

Golden Dragon Museum, the Chinese Cultural Centre of Australia. The museum opened in 1991 to document, interpret and preserve the Chinese heritage in Australia.

The current site for the museum is the area of one of Bendigo's Chinatowns. The Bridge St Chinatown was the centre for Chinese activity in the region from the late 19th century to 1964. The old buildings of Chinatown were bulldozed by the city council to make room for a car park.It was in the 1980s that Russell Jack pushed forward his vision for a Chinese museum in the area. Once the funding was acquired, Harry Charalambous was chosen as the architect. His design incorporated Chinese symbolism and architecture with distinctly Australian materials like corrugated iron and red brick. In this way the building of the Golden Dragon Museum reflected the history of the Chinese of Bendigo.

Chinese heritage constitutes a significant part of the town of Bendigo's cultural identity. The goldrush saw thousands of Chinese migrate to Bendigo in the latter half of the 19th century. Most of these people were young men from the Guangdong province. They were seeking greater economic opportunities for them and their families. Once they arrived in Bendigo the Chinese formed their own community and began raising money for charities. In the 1870s, the local Chinese were invited to take part in the annual Easter festival. The Chinese elders of the region raised money to purchase extravagant costumes and regalia for the event. These costumes form the basis of the museum's collection and are well preserved garments, made from silk and gold...

Very disappointed in this museum. We regularly visit museums of all types around the world. The display standards in the museum proper are shocking. Descriptive signage was some of the worst I have seen anywhere. Tiny lettering, in some cases only 4-5mm in height and ridiculously placed either in cabinets or on walls. Frequently at below waist level and some below knee level, so the only way to read them is to crawl around on the floor. Very poor uneven and spotty lighting made it even more difficult to read or even see most of the artifacts and signs. There is a lot of interesting history in this museum and some fascinating artifacts but the display standards are so woeful it was difficult to enjoy. I understand the need for dim or muted lighting to protect valuable original artifacts but this can be done in a way to make the items accessible to the public whilst still preserving them. In any case to top it off a lot of artifacts are not there, just represented by photographs or worse, copies of photographs. Sorry, but this is a very amateurish display of an important part of Bendigo's and Australia's history and this museum does it a disservice. The gardens and Temple were...

Such a surprise find in Bendigo! Beautiful gardens outside the museum which are definitely worth a look, and a lot of effort has obviously gone into compiling and displaying the collection inside. The only disappointments I have preventing a 5 star review is visitors are limited to the first floor which is unfortunate because it looked like there was PLENTY to see up on the second floor. We could see the collection stretching right back, but had no access to it. And it looked like the dragon was massive and started on the first floor and wrapped right around, but we couldn't take a proper look. Also, it seemed some light bulbs needed changing or something as there was a few displays that were so dark we couldn't see them at all... Other than that it was a great way to kill time and learn...