NOT far from Bendigo lies a ghost town.
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Gold rush buildings line the empty streets. Junk sits everywhere, filling rooms. Old dolls, rusted metal miscellany, and machinery are lie around.
Traces of order remain though. A perfectly formed alphabet covers a blackboard, which would be impossible to reach through the muddle of school desks crammed together, books strewn at random, old soft toys lying on top.
Some junk-filled rooms have been home to bees or, all too evidently, possums.
But within months the site could be a slick, bustling village.
It won't be a ghost town, but it will feel like 1853. The women in old gowns, bustles and bonnets and the men in gold miner attire won't be spirits, but actors.
This is the vision for a derelict replica historic village on 15 acres of land, set to bring a snapshot of gold rush life to central Victoria.
It began life as the Porcupine gold diggings, a few kilometres out of Maldon.
Just traces of the 19th-century settlement remain: metre-high hummocks in the land from mining, overgrown by bushland, and a mudbrick building frontage.
Instead Porcupine Village is better known for its early '90s reincarnation as a "historic" town.
It may have been part of a trend which saw "living history museums" spring up across Australia in the second half of the 20th century.
Historian Graeme Davison documents these sites, which he calls folk museums, in book The Use and Abuse of Australian History. Describing Sovereign Hill's genesis, he points to the originating Ballarat citizens' aims to provide a visual reminder of the lives and work of the men and women who "pioneered and developed" the "great" city.
Davison believed these museums appealed strongly to a nostalgic identification with things of the past, promising visitors to transport them into a "past made tangible".
The Swan Hill Folk Museum - now the Pioneer Settlement - was among the first of these, followed by places such as Coal Creek and Old Gippstown in Gippsland, the Wimmera-Mallee Pioneer Museum, and Glenrowan.
Writing in 2000, Davison flagged signs that these museums' days might be numbered, pointing to dropping visitor numbers at museums, even at Sovereign Hill.
But Sovereign Hill appears to have made it through. Nearly 375,000 people visited in 2019-20, despite the COVID-19 restrictions for much of 2020.
Porcupine did not last the two decades from 2000, however.
Sickness forced its original owner to sell 10 years ago, when it was bought by a couple who locked up the historic buildings and used the block as their home.
It's meant the village lay largely empty for the past decade. But in 2020, the site went on the market, before selling in December.
In the process it chalked up a record: the most pageviews ever recorded on realestate.com.
Read more: What happened? Bendigo used to have history
It may be a replica, but about 90 per cent of Porcupine Village's buildings are authentic for the period, brought in from across Victoria - for instance, the one-cell lock-up which the manager thinks came from near Wangaratta.
Doug and Deborah Baird have been employed to run the village by new owner businessman Frank Hutchinson.
Their first task as managers is to take it from its disused, slightly derelict state to a safe, modern and attractive tourist attraction.
It's not something they've ever done before. Mr Baird has spent most of his career in management, while Mrs Baird's background is in food businesses and motels.
But when Mr Baird saw the role on Seek, the pair said "that's amazing". Within 45 minutes of the interview, they had the job.
Currently Mr and Mrs Baird are repairing and cleaning the village and refurbishing disused motel and restaurant, with the help of contractors.
That's stage one, which will allow the village to open to the public. They're focusing on finishing that now, but are reluctant to name a strict timeline for completion lest they disappoint the public.
After that, everything from a caravan park to "glamping" is being considered. On the cards are school groups and camps, ghost tours, weddings, and even use as a filming location.
If you're here, you're going to go to Maldon, and if you're in Maldon you're going to come here.
- Doug Baird
Mr Baird said it was terrific the number of people the village would bring to Maldon and Bendigo, while also providing jobs.
He said anyone likely to drive to Swan Hill for Pioneer Village would probably be drawn to the site, just an hour and a half out of Melbourne.
"If you've ever been to Maldon on a weekend, you've seen the crowd, they're going to come here," Mr Baird said.
"If you're here, you're going to go to Maldon, and if you're in Maldon you're going to come here."
He said the town's theatre group had already approached he and his wife about acting as period characters.
The village tour begins with a pub, which held a liquor licence in the '90s and 2000s. A copy of a historic licence is pinned to the door, with a twist in its terms.
The publican is required to take in any dead body brought in by the police, in exchange for the sum of one pound. If the publican fails to do so, he will be liable for a five-pound fine.
But there's unlikely to be any need for a makeshift pub morgue in Porcupine Village - a funeral parlour is just 100 metres down the road. It appears fully equipped, if dusty, with coffins open at the ready.
The surgery come dentist touts "amputations at short notice", so visitors could well need the mortuary services.
But for the healthy, there's everything from a ballroom to a smithy.
Mrs Baird said visitors would be be able to try on period costumes in the dressmaker's shop and buy organic vegetables from the general store.
She hoped to feature the Victorian diggings' strong Chinese history in the Chinese Medicine Shop. She also wants to incorporate the area's Aboriginal history into the village.
Mr Baird said they also planned to make the village as accessible as possible for people in wheelchairs.
And in answer to the big question? No, they haven't found any gold on site.
That doesn't mean there won't be gold available, of one kind or another.
There's still plenty of work to be done to turn this ghost town into a thriving mini-metropolis.
But it holds the promise that central Victoria could soon offer visitors something special: the chance to - maybe - travel back in time.
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