Formation of the first lodges

Around New Year 1854, a miner walking through the chaotic diggings from Bendigo township to Ironbark Gully could have read a sign stating "Should this meet the eye of a Freemason, it is to notify that a meeting of the Craft will be held at Fraser's Store, near the Black Swan Hotel on Wednesday night at 9pm."

On the 10th of January, the meeting was held. There were several dozen brethren present from all over the world - Britain, Germany, United States - and to prove them as Freemasons, a Volume of the Sacred Law (in this case, a Bible) was needed. However, giving an idea of life on the goldfields, one of the brethren had to walk all the way back to View Point (about a kilometre) asking at every tent before one was found. The formalities completed, the brethren decided to petition the Provincial Grand Lodge in Sydney to warrant a lodge in Bendigo.

Australia Felix Lodge in Melbourne was asked to recommend and forward the petition but, when nothing had happened for several months, the Bendigo group (with a stern letter to Australia Felix Lodge!) applied again, directly to Sydney. The petition was granted and on October 3rd 1854, the Golden Lodge of Bendigo met for the first time with 17 brethren. The minutes make no mention of a consecration, just the installation of Master and officers, and the original warrant (which did not arrive until 1864) is actually dated October 24th! However, the lodge was underway and at its first meeting it initiated 2 candidates, and had proposals for 11 more candidates and 10 brethren for affiliation.

Golden Lodge had its next installation meeting on December 27th 1854 because the originally named Master had long since left for another goldfield! For the first few years it met at Cohn's Criterion Hotel in Mundy Street, but by 1856 the brethren had raised £950 to build their own Hall. It was built in Myers Street and was one of the first brick buildings in Bendigo.

In 1856, the Lodge of Instruction was formed and things seemed to be going well. But the following year the first of several major crises in the lodge occurred. The Junior Warden, Bro Alex Fox, was not appointed Senior Warden (which would normally assure him of election as the next Worshipful Master) by the Worshipful Master, Thomas Connelly. Taking it as a personal slight (he was a cultured Anglo-Jewish photographer, Connelly a brash American entrepreneur) over the next few months, he and some friends black-balled petitions from several of Connelly's friends. The dissention was so great that the new Provincial Grand Lodge in Melbourne (under Provincial Grand Master Frederick Standish, a Golden Lodge member) had to send a mediator to smooth things out. The result was a new lodge, Corinthian Lodge, which was consecrated on July 28th 1858 with WBro Fox installed as Worshipful Master. Corinthian was sponsored by Mt Alexander Lodge in Castlemaine because Golden Lodge refused, just as it refused Corinthian's application to meet in the Masonic Hall until 1863.

Things settled down for some years and membership of the lodges grew. A group of Golden Lodge brethren living in the Eaglehawk area felt they could support a lodge of their own so, on 23rd May 1865, Eaglehawk Lodge was consecrated with WBro John Dowding as Worshipful Master. It prospered and was happily spared the dissention that was to continue in the Bendigo lodges.

In 1865 Golden Lodge saw, once again, the Senior Warden passed over in the election for Master. Again, Connelly was Golden's Master, and as he was felt to be promoting his own friends in preference to others, a long-standing personal dispute between several senior brethren broke out. Once again the dissatisfied group of brethren petitioned for a new lodge. Corinthian supported it and, on 7th May 1866, Zenith Lodge was consecrated with WBro Ed Garsed as Worshipful Master.

The feeling between the three lodges reached its peak over the purchase of the land in View Street on which the Masonic Centre (now the Capital Theatre) was to be built. (These events are described in detail here)

It would take a generation, and the departure of many of the original personalities for sense and brotherhood to prevail. Membership in all lodges was strong, however, and continued to grow. At the amalgamation of Golden and Corinthian Lodges in 1872, the new lodge had 190 members, Zenith had 140 and Eaglehawk 60.

By the celebration in 1904 of the first 50 years of Freemasonry in Bendigo, the lodges had all prospered to the extent that two new lodges were able to be formed that year: Corona and Sandhurst. This set the tone for the strength of Freemasonry in Bendigo through the new century, which was to see the formation of the Lodge Composite in 1922, Bendigo City Lodge in 1951, and the Bendigo and District Daylight Lodge in 1983.

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These pages are designed by David Beagley for the Hall Board of the Bendigo Masonic Centre.
Responsibility for, and copyright of, content (unless otherwise noted) are his and his alone.

Last updated November 2005