Ballarat

Last weekend was a 2 day weekend that I didn't have to spend working, so Jill planned a trip for us to Ballarat. This is a town about an hour and a half away from Melbourne. We left town shortly after I got off work and ate a quick bite. Driving in Australia is always an adventure. Jill's navigation and my intuition (Jill says) got us to the Sovereign Hill Lodge around 6:00. Our room was a cozy and complete with heat (one of the features on the brochure - our room had radiant heat to be specific) and a flat panel TV. We caught a little bit of a Clark Griswold's family vacation to Wally World before we hit the hay.

The wind was howling all night and the radiator was creaking from thermal expansion. A little rough sleeping, but that didn't matter - we were about to be transported back into time! We ate our continental breakfast (complete with plum jelly and Vegemite) and looked at the clock - the Sovereign Hill park wasn't open just yet. So, we ventured into town. It is pretty neat, with heaps (a little Australian lingo for you) of old buildings and interesting shops. We found another interesting wool and yarn shop. We were heading back to the park and we got a call. Two of my co-workers (one with his wife) decided to come out to make a visit that day too. We met up with them at the front and spent the morning with them.

Sovereign Hill (see our pictures here) is a living museum, complete with actors and staff that replicate what it was like in the town of Ballarat over 100 years ago. They have demonstrations, crafts, and food that is all period correct. Here are a few of the things we saw/did: a tour on how gold is found and collected above ground, a below ground mine tour, the red-coats and musket demonstrations, how lollies (sweets) are made, how gold is refined and poured into a bar, stage coaches, candle making, blacksmith, tinsmith, bowling, wheel wrighting, and some theatre demonstrations. It is a lot to do - so much that we couldn't do it all in one day.

Sunday was a special day at Soverign Hill and because we spent 2 nights at the lodge (2nd night was half off), we got to have 2 day passes for the price of 1. It was Steam Day! What is steam day you ask? It is the day that they brought in all sorts of different steam powered vehicles and demonstrations. I posted a few in the videos section and you'll have to watch them to see what I mean. It was very cool, and we couldn't have timed it better - except for the weather which rained and drizzled on us most of the day. The other highlight was that I got a chance to pan for gold. I was successful - I found about 12 flakes! The the guy showing us how to pan said it was worth about $5. We took our newly found fortunes as license to visit the bakery and spent it on pasties, scones, cookies, and sweet breads to take home. Mmmm.

This is getting long, so I better wrap it up... This last weekend was fun too. We experienced our first "Footy" game. Australian rules football is an interesting sport. It is kind of a cross between football, rugby, volleyball, and soccer. Jill picked us up some scarfs to wear to the game that have the colors of our favorite teams in Melbourne on them (Jason-the Essendon Bombers, and Jill-the Western Bulldogs). We probably should have chosen to wear the scarves of the teams were were actually watching though, it was the St. Kilda Saints vs the Richmond Tigers. Ah well, we didn't get that many odd looks our way. Yesterday was a fun day too, we ventured south with a co-worker and hit a few balls at a driving range. I got some pointers from him that I'll need to practice and Jill won a little putting competition we had. We came back and stopped at the Victorian market which has all the souvenir loot that one could ever hope to want to take away from a visit to Australia. We attended church last night and had another great service.

Phew... sorry for making you read all of that. We'll try not to store up so much information in a single sitting.