MYSTERY CACHE NOT AT THE POSTED COORDINATES, BUT THE CRESWICK COSY CORNER CAFE WAS!
During the 1860s this corner ranked among the world's busiest financial hubs; known simply as The Corner#.
"The Corner" is the name given to the place where the sharebrokers and share jobbers assemble, and hundreds of gold speculators, dealers and agents would cluster here and vigorously engage in the business of trading in mining stocks and ventures.
This was originally an informal meeting place front in of Stallard and Goujon, the first stockbrokers to set up shop on this corner.
The first official stock exchange was a shed over a mineshaft on the site now occupied by Her Majesty's. This was followed by a larger exchange occupying the Unicorn Hotel and Ballarat Mechanics' Institute, before the bigger Ballarat Mining Exchange was built in 1887.
"When the rich gutters were nearly worked out, and the large original shares had got reduced to scrip, share dealing became a larger and livelier business, and brokers and jobbers multiplied, nearly all of them being, for the first few years, men who had been actually engaged in mines as working or sleeping shareholders. The business was accompanied by projection of new ventures, and the occasionally violent alternations of activity and depression which usually mark the course of share dealing, for promoters of new schemes have to live, if they can, by their craft, and the passion for scrip gambling provided an ample arena for their exploits." - History of Ballarat - J.B Withers
This was the place not just where money was invested, but where the first news of gold finds was hollered out to clustered groups of miners and speculators amidst robust questions and discussions of the quality of the finds.
In 1966 the original London Chartered Bank building was demolished and was replaced by this modern bank building.
The name "The Corner#" arose from the fact that in the early sixties, when the previously unorganised business of share dealing began to assume regular form—Messrs. Stallard and Goujon being of the earliest—share dealing offices were opened at the south-east corner of Sturt and Lydiard streets, where the London Chartered Bank now stands.
The Corner at that time was quaintly covered by a wooden building on posts, an ironmonger's store occupied by A.R. Reid, now the actuary of the Geelong Savings Bank, and meeting in a wooden building erected over an old shaft on the site now occupied by the Academy of Music.
For many years the gathering has been in front of the Unicorn hotel, on the south side of Sturt street, the brokers' offices being in the Unicorn passage, or right-of-way, and in Bones' Buildings, next east from the hotel. Bones' Building was originally a draper's shop, then a mining exchange, and Bones has added to it a second story, made one end into a billiard room, and retained most of the brokers' offices.
The first Exchange, with M. Walsh president, who was one of the earliest brokers to open an office in the corner building, and he took in a partner named Were, and E.C. Moore, who had been hospital secretary, subsequently joined the firm. Other brokers followed, a daily muster was established, and the foundation of the Ballarat Stock Exchange was thus laid.
This was in the sixties. After that the Mechanics' Institute and the Unicorn hotel became the homes of the Exchange, and to Walsh succeeded F.C. Downes, and to Downes succeeded W. Nixon, the several secretaries being Messrs. Main, Slater, and Woolcott.
On the 6th July, 1881, a rival, called the Royal Exchange, with Edwin Millard president, and S.W. Smythe secretary, was opened, the members having seceded from the original Ballarat Exchange because they declined to refuse to give individual quotations to the press. On the 5th December, 1885, the Royal was merged in the Ballarat, with Millard president and Woolcott secretary, both still (June, 1887) holding their respective offices.
There were then 98 members on the exchange roll, and the entrance fee by that time had been raised from £5 5s. to £25, and the stock list including 108 mines, the bulk of which are in the Ballarat district. Whilst this chapter is going through the press, the foundations of a new stock exchange building are being laid in Lydiard street.
Source: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1304971h.html#ch-09