Photograph of a view of mine workings at the foot of a hillside, in front of which is a lake.

Prince Albert Victor and Prince George of Wales arrived in Ballarat on the 29th June 1881. The Prince's visited two mining works during their visit to the town. They first visited the Band of Hope and Albion Consul's Company Mine where they travelled 420 feet down the shaft of the mine. The Prince's who donned waterproof miner's overalls to protect them from the streams of water that fell from the roof of the mine, broke quartz away from the seam that they described as 'glistening with small pieces of gold.' As soon as they reached the surface, they had their photograph taken 'in miners clothes just as we are.' The Princes then visited North Hurdsfield Company's Mine to see the process of alluvial mining. Quotation from The Cruise of Her Majesty's Ship Bacchante 1879-1882 (1886).

This is a photograph from one of the nine albums compiled following Prince Albert Victor (1864-92) and Prince George of Wales' (1865-1936) world tour aboard HMS Bacchante from 1879 to 1882. The photographs were collected by their chaperon and tutor, John Neale Dalton.

The majority of the images in these albums are topographical views and architectural studies, loosely arranged according to the group’s itinerary. They include photographs of artefacts, local people and public figures, as well as portraits of the princes taken during the tour. The attempt to recreate the experience of a journey through such an assortment of images is common to many amateur travelling albums of this period. In 1886, some of the photographs in the albums were reproduced as engravings in the published accounts of the voyage, The Cruise of Her Majesty's Ship Bacchante, 1879-1882.