Yet James Oddie, first chairman of the Ballarat Municipality and the person who restored the Eureka flag to the city, is strangely unrecognised in public buildings or statuary, beyond a short backstreet near Lake Wendouree.

In a recent submission to Ballarat Health Services regarding a proposed name for the new wing of the Ballarat Base Hospital, the Ballarat Historical Society and Ballarat and District Genealogical Society noted this lack of recognition of a man who arguably did more for the establishment of the city as we know it than any other person.

Dr Anne Beggs Sunter, the official biographer of James Oddie, says this lack of acknowledgement is a strange oversight.

She says it is not because Oddie was a disagreeable man or had committed some heinous undiscovered act that obliterated him from history. Rather he was the opposite; a dedicated and generous philanthropist, a champion of women’s rights and a forward thinking planner who laid the foundation, literally and metaphorically, for Ballarat’s celebrated art gallery.

“He was an advocate for women to be admitted to the new Ballarat Hospital at a time when it was reserved for miners only,” Ms Beggs Sunter said.

“He was also on the Benevolent Asylum Board.”

Brett Weinberg, of the Ballarat Historical Society, has discovered one of the acts of philanthropy Oddie effected was the purchase of musical instruments for the unfortunate inmates, realising that the succour of music was a relief to the pains of their lives.

So why is James Oddie honoured only in a short street and a room in the art gallery? Perhaps it’s to do with his passionate defence of liberality and democracy. He was known for clashing with his opponents, who may have had the last word after his death in 1911.