The Heritage Council has added two regional Victorian mining banners to its register, confirming their significance on the goldfields.

The banners were usually displayed on horse-drawn carts often during parades as symbols of pride and solidarity.

Museums Victoria has described the banners as reminders of the foundations behind the eight-hour working day movement.

They represented the miners' battle and Victoria's influence in that fight, which spread interstate and overseas.

The Maldon banner was created in 1888 while the Stawell banner from western Victoria was developed in 1904.

Stawell Museum's curator Kate van Dyck said the Stawell banner had to be restored in Ballarat after it was damaged in the Australian Miners' parade.

"We don't have possession of it, it's actually on display at the Northern Grampians Shire office," she said.

Ms van Dyck said the banner was significant and its meaning needed to be shared more widely.

"It's unfortunate not a lot of people, even locals, are very aware of the extent of the gold mining history and the activities in Stawell," she said.

Ms van Dyck also said Stawell had a significant place in history because it had the state's deepest gold mine.

"There were several protests here," she said.

"Like any town of a time, people were in a hurry to move forward and modernise," Ms van Dyck said.

Meanwhile the Maldon banner has been the central part of that central Victorian town's museum display, since it was handed over in the 1970s.

The Maldon Museum was formed in 1966 and has been based in the old shire hall, which originally was built in 1858.

Museum vice-president Tony Kane said he hoped more visitors would come to see the banner in light of the heritage recognition.

"Probably more importantly it will help us in protecting the banner and ensuring that it remains an important part of the museum's collection," he said.

"The condition of the banner when we got it, it was starting to deteriorate.

The Maldon banner before restoration. ( Supplied: Maldon Museum )

It has two sides with two very different historical messages on display.

The front has an oil painting on canvas depicting a miner and a mine owner shaking hands.

"The wording on the banner says 'contention and strife declined, labour and capital reconciled'," Mr Kane said.

He said the phrase suggested the mine boss and the miner, shown in the image, were getting along and were on equal terms.

On the other side of the banner was a more traditional trade union sentiment: "united we stand, divided we fall".

Mr Kane said the banner had been an important part of the town because it was regularly displayed in Maldon's Easter Fair parade.

"The Easter Fair itself dates back to 1878 and is one of the oldest continuous local celebrations held in Australia," he said.

The Maldon banner is part of a procession during the 1900s. ( Supplied: Maldon Museum )

Michelle Stevenson from Museums Victoria said it was fantastic the banners had been preserved because few trade union banners had survived.

"So there were over 200 trade union banners originally but today there are very few that survived," she said.

Ms Stevenson said it was common for banners to represent different union branches.

"Often towns had their own parades as well as the big ones that were held in Melbourne, so it really was a movement that kind of crossed the whole state," she said.

"Museums Victoria holds eight trade union banners in the collection and they range from 1890 to 1916 so they are quite early."

The banners in the collection include engineers, blacksmiths, manufacturing workers union, united iron assistance, railways union, and the carpenters and joiners.

"Some of the unions were largely Melbourne-based but with some of the banners represented in the collection some of them are from Victorian branches," Ms Stevenson said.

Mining history

The Maldon Museum vice-president Tony Kane. ( ABC Central Victoria: Stephanie Corsetti )

The Maldon community has long recognised the miners' banner as significant locally, but now its inclusion on Victoria's Heritage Register has cemented its statewide appeal.

The Heritage Council stated Victoria's first mining unions were formed in the 1860s to protect the conditions and wages of goldfields workers.

The museum's Tony Kane said an eight-hour day was obtained by stone-masters in Melbourne in 1856.

In March 1872, the Bendigo Miners Association held the first Annual Miners' Picnic and Sports Day at Ravenswood.

Three months later, miners at Bendigo were awarded an eight-hour working day which has been hailed as one of the most important industrial reforms achieved during the nineteenth century.

"Victoria really played a lead in spreading the eight-hour day movement both nationally and internationally as well, so the role of regions like Stawell and Maldon are really important," Ms Stevenson said.



The Maldon Miners Association then joined the Amalgamated Miners Association of Victoria in 1882.

"The banners are conveying a really important message about working towards eight hours of work and eight hours of rest and eight hours of free time," Ms Stevenson said.

She also said the eight-hour day was now fundamental to Australian life.

"That kind of association with the beginnings of the trade union movement and the eight-hour day and what would become the Australian working man's paradise is the key message that these banners told at that time and continue to tell today," she said.

The Maldon Museum was established in April 1966, not long after the National Trust declared Maldon a 'notable town'.

The museum was established as a tourist attraction for visitors and has been volunteer-run.

Another nearby site, Golden Point, was declared historically significant last year because diggers gathered there more than 160 years ago to take a stand against higher gold licence fees, considered a forerunner to the Eureka Stockade.

