Residents young and old boarded two breezy Ballarat trams on Wednesday night for a trip along Lake Wendouree, to commemorate the 47th anniversary of the closure of the city’s tram system. 

Ballarat Tramway Museum operations manager Neville Britton said the trams held an important place in the city’s social fabric, connecting people to the “isolated” Lake Wendouree. 

“It was quite a popular thing for people from Melbourne and Geelong to jump on the train and come up to Ballarat, bearing in mind the original tram line ran past the station,” he said. 

“In 1889, 50,000 people came here on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Of those who came to Lake Wendouree over the two days, 15,000 travelled on the horse-drawn trams, and that was full capacity.

“It really transformed the way people could get around.”

One of the trams on display on Wednesday was Number 40, which was the last Ballarat tram in service, and was surrounded by 5,000 spectators on its final voyage on September 19, 1971. 

For Ballarat resident Marlene Littlehales, who used to take the tram from her work at the Paddles Shoes factory out to the Victoria Street orphanage in the early 1960s, the chance to once again ride at night was a delight.

“I have really good memories of those times … but they’ve had their day,” she said. “[Despite bad weather] you just had to do it, that was that, or you’d get left in Ballarat.”