A big part of the appeal is that Deborah is an authentic mine. Norm Harris has been a tour guide for two years and says overseas tourists, mainly from the US and Britain, get a big kick from the tour because they experience a real mine. An authentic mine tour requires authentic clothing. Before setting off on the two-hour Underground Adventure Tour you have to change into overalls, boots and wear a miner's hat and lamp. The tour concludes with morning tea, lunch or afternoon tea in the crib - an area where miners had their breaks.
Morning tea is served on the rickety wooden table and stools.
There are warm scones wrapped in tea towels, jam and cream, tea and cold drinks. The lunch tour rewards you with a Cornish pastie. Other tours include the one-hour Mine Experience, which takes you 20 storeys underground, and the CageRider, where you plunge 30 storeys underground in a miner's cage and return to 15 metres above ground with a rush. Bendigo is one of Australia's grandest cities, built on one of the world's richest goldfields. The Bendigo goldfield was discovered in 1851 and, by the 1880s, there were more than 1800 mines, which produced 22 million ounces of gold by 1954.