Ararat, Victoria

Ararat is a town in the Central Highlands region of Victoria, Australia, about 198 kilometres west of Melbourne on the Western Highway, on the eastern slopes of the Ararat Hills between Victoria's Western District and the Wimmera. Its Djabwurrung name is Tallarambooroo. The source of the Hopkins River lies a few kilometres to the east. Its urban population was 8,500 at the 2021 census, and it serves a region of 11,880 residents across the Rural City of Ararat, of which it is the largest settlement and administrative centre. The discovery of gold in 1857 turned it into a boomtown that prospered until about 1900 and then slowly declined; it was proclaimed a city on 24 May 1950, and numbers have risen a little since the 1990s. It is named after Mount Ararat, 10 kilometres to the south-west, which the pastoralist Horatio Wills named in 1841. It is the only city in Australia founded by Chinese people.