How are Ballarat's bellringers connected to Australia's first political assassination attempt?

Updated June 11, 2018 13:00:18

The bellringers of Ballarat are determined to keep tradition alive Video: The bellringers of Ballarat are determined to keep tradition alive (ABC News)

There's an inextricable link between Australia's first political assassination attempt and a set of heavy, bronze bells that sit at the top of Ballarat's town hall.

Key points:

  • Ballarat Town Hall bells named after Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria's second son
  • Prince Alfred's would-be assassin Henry O'Farrell was from Ballarat
  • The bells were hung in 1871 which made the town hall one of only four in the world to have a set of full-circle bells

Almost 150 years after they were hung, the bells and the story behind them have largely been forgotten, but the city's remaining bellringers are determined to ensure they are rung well into the future.

Ballarat bellringer Edith Fry explained that the bells were named after Prince Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and the first member of the royal family to visit Australia

During his royal tour Prince Alfred had visited Ballarat in December 1867 and was shot during an attempted assassination in Sydney by Henry O'Farrell in the following March.

"The bells were purchased by the people of Ballarat because Prince Alfred was the first royal visitor to Ballarat," Ms Fry said.

"He journeyed on [from Ballarat] and while he was in Sydney he was almost assassinated. But then it was discovered — to everyone's horror — that that person [the would-be assassin] was from Ballarat.

"They were so horrified this person came from Ballarat that they put [the bells] in the new town hall tower as thanks that Prince Alfred survived."

The Alfred Memorial Bells were commissioned from England and took months to arrive by ship.


At 6am on Christmas Day that year hundreds of the Ballarat residents gathered to hear the bells ring for the first time, celebrating the moment with champagne.

Since that moment, the ringing of the town hall bells have marked both moments of joy and mourning for the Ballarat community.

They have chimed at the end of major wars, before the city's renowned Begonia Festival Parade and during royal visits.

They have also sounded in mourning after the deaths of councillors or long-time ringers, or to mark events such as the Black Saturday fires.

Bellringers an 'ungodly lot'

Ballarat's population is rapidly growing, but the number of people with the knowledge and experience to ring its bells is dwindling.

Bellringer Michael McBain said jokes about people trained to ring peals of full-circle bells, most often in churches, can be traced back as far as the bells' beginnings in early 17th-century England.

"The trouble is, by tradition, bellringers are not church-goers," he said.

Although most sets of the bells ring out before religious services, Mr McBain joked that bellringers are known as an "ungodly lot".

"In a lot of the towers the bell-ringers' entrance is separate from the church entrance. They don't mix," he said.

"The bellringers love to ring bells. They will ring the bells for half an hour to call people to worship, and then they'll go out their door and go home."

Mr McBain is one of a handful of trained bellringers in Ballarat.

The group meets every Wednesday evening at a Ballarat church to practise and learn new skills together, but lately there aren't enough of them to consistently ring the city's two sets of traditional full-circle bells.

'It's like riding a bike'

Ms Fry said mathematical talent was probably more useful for bellringing than a musical background.

"In here it's about the order but for those outside it's about the musicality of it," she said.

Ms Fry first learned to ring as a teenager and was drawn to return to it after a 20-year hiatus.

"For some people it's about the musical quality and for some people it's the physical side of it," she said.

"Sometimes people just get quite addicted with bellringing because it's relatively easy. It's like riding a bike, once you've learnt."

Topics: religion-and-beliefs, history, music, ballarat-3350, melbourne-3000, buninyong-3357, creswick-3363

First posted June 09, 2018 11:39:35