Bendigo has three sister cities:

• Los Altos, established in 1987, California, USA.
• Penzance, established in 1996)/St Just, established in 2013, United Kingdom.
• Haimen, established in 2014, Jiangsu Province, China.

About the Sister City movement

The Sister City movement is a worldwide concept that originated in the USA shortly after World War II. Today it is a worldwide movement and over 160 municipalities across Australia are involved with more than 390 overseas relationships.

Visit Bendigo’s sister city gardens

Gardens symbolising these relationships have been established in Rosalind Park:

• The Los Altos Garden featuring arid plants and succulents in a bed of gravel. 
• The Penzance Garden featuring knotted hedges.

Bendigo Community Sister Cities Committee Inc

The role of the Bendigo Community Sister Cities Committee Inc is to facilitate, promote, and develop Sister Cities relationships that provide cultural exchange, economic development, education and tourism opportunities to the greater Bendigo community and assist the City of Greater Bendigo with international relationships.

The committee's vision is: Linking Bendigo to the cities of the world.

The committee's core values are:

• Cultural Awareness and Understanding: believing cultural awareness and understanding benefits all citizens.
• Cooperation: working cooperatively with stakeholders to achieve the aims of our Sister City relationships.
• Mutual Benefit: believing that a relationship (whether it is cultural, social, or economic) is not truly realised unless all stakeholders benefit from their interaction.

This year the committee published its Strategic Plan 2016-2019, in which it's aims and aspirations are clearly explained.

Meetings are held every second Thursday of each month from 4.30pm to 6pm in the upstairs meeting room of the Bendigo library.