It opened in October 1854, one year after gold was found at the nearby Rushworth.

John Thomas Lewis and James Meek Nickinson, two sailors, found a gold nugget in the grass at Whroo in October 1854.

This happened to be the same month as the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War, thus the name of the mine.

[3] Lewis and Nickinson opened the mine under a partnership, hiring 100 men in this first year.

By the 1920s, there was little recorded activity at the Balaclava mine, and operations ceased.