Lake Wendouree is the large shallow artificial lake immediately west of the city centre, surrounded by parks, gardens, and the well-known wedding-cake gazebos of the Ballarat Botanical Gardens. It has been a recreational lake since the 1860s — boating, fishing, sailing — and was the rowing course for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
The Lake Wendouree Walk is a flat 6 km loop around the foreshore that locals use for the daily run or dog walk. Black swans are the obvious wildlife; pelicans, cormorants, and a few hundred eels round out the cast. Watching the rowing eights at dawn on a still autumn morning is one of Ballarat's small pleasures.