Division of Ballarat
Australian federal electoral division
The Division of Ballarat (spelt Ballaarat from 1901 until the 1977 election) is an Australian electoral division in the state of Victoria. The division was proclaimed in 1900, and was one of the original 65 divisions to be contested at the first federal election. It was named for the provincial city of the same name by Scottish squatter Archibald Yuille, who established the first settlement − his sheep run called Ballaarat − in 1837, with the name derived from a local Wathawurrung word for the area, balla arat, thought to mean "resting place".
The division currently takes in the regional City of Ballarat and the smaller towns of Gordon, Meredith, Buninyong, Clunes, Creswick, Daylesford, and Trentham and part of Burrumbeet.
The current Member for Ballarat, since the 2001 federal election, is Catherine King, a member of the Australian Labor Party.
Geography
Since 1984, federal electoral division boundaries in Australia have been determined at redistributions by a redistribution committee appointed by the Australian Electoral Commission. Redistributions occur for the boundaries of divisions in a particular state, and they occur every seven years, or sooner if a state's representation entitlement changes or when divisions of a state are malapportioned.
Ballarat consists of the City of Ballarat and Shire of Hepburn, as well as portions of the shires of Golden Plains and Moorabool.
History
At various times in its existence the division has included other towns such as Ararat, Maryborough, and Stawell. The towns of Ballan, Bacchus Marsh, Blackwood and Myrniong were previously in the division before the division of Hawke was formed for the 2022 federal election.
“Division of Ballarat” enters the record as australian federal electoral division. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Division, Ballarat and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2973434. Authority coordinates are -37.516, 144.066. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1901, 1977, 1900 and 1837.
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This entry incorporates text from “Division of Ballarat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.