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Published: January 24th 2019
Ballarat
Finding out about the Ballarat gold rush with JeanGetting to Australia from Singapore was not so easy! Friend Linda picked me up from Kathy’s to take me to Changi airport for a just-after-midnight flight to Melbourne. She’d just come back from visit her son who’s studying in Melbourne, so we hadn’t had the chance to meet up and it gave us an opportunity to natter on the way. She assured me that I’d love Melbourne and Ballarat. When we arrived at departures se pulled up outside and I ran in to check if I was in the right terminal. There was my flight with Scoot airlines on the board ...... but retimed to 03.30 in the morning. It was now only just after 9 in the evening. Linda lives quite near the airport so I jumped back into her car and went back to her house for a cup of tea whilst her husband Mickey checked for information on line. There wasn’t any, so began to feel a little anxious that I’d got it wrong, and Mickey said that Scoot has had some bad press lately: passengers stranded in Taipei for two days and some such stories. So they kindly ferried me back to the airport. At least we’d
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Jean watering her plants had a good chat and a chance to catch up with family photos and such like. The flight eventually left some time after 4 in the morning. No apologies. Very tired passengers . As I got on the plane I was able to text cousin Jean to let her know I’d be about 4 hours late.
The night passed and , with a body clock jump forwards of 4 hours, we landed in Melbourne . I expected spraying of the airplane cabin and sterilisation of walking shoes ...... but nothing like that these days and even managed to digitally exit via machine from the airport! I found the bus stand and waited, hoping there would be a seat for me and that they’d honour the bus ticket I’d booked for earlier in the day. No problem. Eeeee!!!! I’m in Australia! An hour and a half later we pulled into the station in Ballarat and Jean and I met again for the first time in nearly 40 years. Time for a quick luggage dump at her house, quick wash and out for dinner at an Asian restaurant with some of her friends. They are the Pot Luck , who meet up
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Jean’s lovely home and garden to share food and good friendship. One of their friends was visiting from England and has just had his first novel published. I’ve still got a suitcase half full of books to read, so I’ll get it when I get home : The Folded Notes by Mandz Singh. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming, and the food was terrific. Enjoyed talking to Auntie Mary and Uncle Joseph who had come to Ballarat from Sarawak to be near their son and his family.
The next day I rather overslept and Jean very kindly let me! The bed was so comfortable and it was so quiet at the back of the house. We found it easy to talk and talk.........so breakfast lasted some time. Then, just driving around Ballarat was a delight. Wide tree lined streets and beautiful weather-boarded or brick bungalows with incredibly intricate wrought iron ‘pelmets’ over the verandas and sash windows. Huge agapanthus blooming everywhere ( like a weed said Jean) But tall and purple and not bent over by the wind. Jean decided to take me to Daylesford for the day and miss out the Ballarat tourist meccas as it’s school holidays and they would be heaving with
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Mandz Singh with his first published novel ‘The Folded Notes’ families and children . So ,left for another visit in the future is the Sovreign Hill living museum about life during the 19th century gold rush, and the wildlife park of Australian animals. Daylesford had more beautiful homes, everywhere looking lush and green after winter in the UK. And lots of Art and Craft galleries. An Asian shop ‘Moongate’ drew us in as they were having a closing down sale so we had to potter around there and talk to the owner who is planning to retire. Loved the bookshop in town too and the bookseller was lovely and friendly. They didn’t have any Jackie Morris books in the children’s section so I told him all about The Lost Words and he write it all down saying it all sounded great and he’d see what he could find out.
We came home via the Main Street in Ballarat and had Vietnamese food for an early dinner.
Next day was Friday and Imanaged to get up ata a reasonable time , and again lots of chatting over breakfast. Jean took me to the Botanical Gardens and Lake Wendouree. The gardens are rather beautiful with wonderful trees, many of which were planted
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Me, Mandz and ‘Auntie ‘ Mary in the late 19th century. Within the gardens is ‘Prime Ministers’ Avenue which features busts on plinths of every Australian Prime Minister. Although Jean pointed out that they are at least three behind at the moment........ can’t keep up with the quick changes that have been going on in recent years! And it must be costing the Ballarat local government a fortune!
We crossed the road and sat outside the lakeside cafe. I had my first coffee since I left home. It was cool down by the lake and elegant black swans were gliding effortlessly through the water.
Jean drove us back into town and to the Mining Exchange building. Ballarat was the scene of one of the greatest gold rush stories of the 19th century. You can only imagine the excitement when a prospector struck lucky and came into town to register his find at the exchange. Now one of the businesses it houses is the Gold Shop. Jean knew the owner and we went in to see the little gold nuggets on sale, and the jewellery the proprietor makes from the smaller nuggets. Nowadays there are still people who go panning for gold, but they can use metal
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A great bookshop detectors. In another cabinet the owner displayed all the little metal items ( buttons, coins and suchlike) found by metal detectors. Tiny parts of the life of those optimistic people who searched for their fortunes in the goldfields around Ballarat. So that is why Ballarat is such an elegant town, with broad avenues, lofty churches and beautiful houses. In its heyday it provided wealth for some after the first gold was discovered in 1851. One month after the first discovery 1,000 prospectors had found their way to Ballarat and the numbers grew over the next two years. The government of the day wanted its share of the fabulous wealth and a gold licence fee was levied in advance. When the cost of the licence jumped even higher their was a meeting of miners who burned their permits and demanded the right to political representation and abolishion of the license. The government refused, so the miners barricaded themselves into a stockade where they were attacked by soldiers and 28 miners killed. There was public outrage which led to the founding of a more democratic assembly for the state of Victoria. It was called the Eureka rebellion.
The real star of the
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Vietnamese food in Ballarat show in the gold store however, was the dear little rescue dog that relaxed comfortably atop the glass cabinet displaying the gold nuggets for sale. The gold store owner was obviously totally smitten with her as she’d been found only a few weeks before with matted dirty hair, nervous and scared. And now she’s the gold store dog: a rags to riches story!
Just along the street was the Ballarat Art Gallery. Jean waited for me in the coffee shop with a cool drink while I made a quick tour of discovery. I loved the aboriginal art, much of the work by the Numina sister’s, a talented family of women artists. There were also cardboard sculptures in the form of organic plant like structures. Artist ElizaJane Gilchrist imagines that cardboard retains the cellular memory of being a plant and reforms it into these triffid-like shapes.
We had a little wander around another lovely bookshop and then popped into a nearby sushi restaurant for a tasty snack before going back to Jean’s home for a little rest and cool down ( hot today) We joined some friends of Jean’s for dinner at their Air bnb house. They’d arrived from Melbourne for
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Fragrant giant lilies in the botanical gardens the annual music festival ‘Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields ‘. Jean is a great supporter of this musical event and was to be actively involved as a volunteer. Hurriedly clearing the table after our meal, we left for St Patrick’s Cathedral and the opening concert which featured the music of Estonian composer Arvo Part.
On Saturday we had an early start and after a quick breakfast we headed out of Ballarat to Snake Valley and a country church that was a copy of the cathedral in Melbourne. Under a blue sky and in the shade of tall, leafy trees the churchyard had the atmosphere of a bygone gentle era. We listened to an organ recital and a solo cello recital. The performers bowed deeply to the audience and to each other at the end , and we all filed out into the midday sun and into the church hall where the local ladies were brewing up tea and coffee and dispensing sandwiches and scones. We drove back into town and to another organ recital, this time by an Italian musician who more than compensated for his limited English language by bowing deeply to the audience and pressing his hand to
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Attempting a selfie with Jean at the botanical gardens his heart in acknowledgment of the enthusiastic clapping from his audience.
On the way home we popped in to take a look at Craig’s Hotel which was decorated in the style of Ballarat in its heyday in gold rush times..... and took note of the famous people who had been drawn to stay there as the fame of the Ballarat gold mining reverberated around the globe. I was totally pooped and had saturated my ability to appreciate any more organ music that day. So while Jean sallied bravely out to an evening performance, I stayed home and spent the evening looking through some of Jean’s amazing and extensive collection of cookery books. The bookshelves groan beneath their collective weight and I am sure that Jean’s collection must rival that of any bookshop!
Next morning I rammed all my stuff back into the suitcase and Jean drove me to Ballarat train station. I’ve had a lovely stay, and through Jean I’ve met some interesting people and found out so much more than I expected about Australian history.
I boarded the Melbourne train, and in less than an hour I was alighting at Bacchus-Marsh under a deep blue sky. Waiting for me
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Bronze busts of former Prime Ministers in the car park was Carolyn. The last time I met her was nearly 30 years ago when she came to work at Home End School for a summer . A young Australian teacher who had set off on a round-the-world adventure and had spotted my ad in the Times Educational Supplement. Needing extra funds and being curious about this English School for overseas children, based at a Tudor farmhouse in the Herefordshire countryside, she applied for the job and got it. We had a great summer and then she headed back across Europe and met up with her boyfriend Adrian in Thailand where they explored by motorbike before going back to Australia. Now Carolyn and Adrian have three children and here I am , catching up with them. Her eldest is only a couple of years younger than she was when she came to work at Home End. So we both felt a bit emotional when we met in Bacchus Marsh station car park after all those years of keeping in touch with the annual Christmas news in a card. She drove me back to her house via an impressive avenue of mature Elms trees, saying that it always
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Lake Wendouree reminded her of the time I asked her to take one of our students back to The Elms school in Colwall. We stopped by a farm shop, piled high with local vegetables and fruit, herbs, jams, preserves and sauces. The land around Bacchus Marsh has an abundance of vegetable and fruit farms.
They have a lovely home and two sweet King Charles spaniels. They cooked a wonderful lunch and we just kept on talking as Carolyn filled me in on her teaching career and then back over her life before the ‘gap’ year when she arrived at my little school in Cradley.
After lunch I went with her to pick up her youngest son Finn who’d just returned from a fishing and boating trip with a friend and his parents. Their home was long and low ( reminded me of Southfork in the Dallas TV series) and was surrounded by vast flat fields. The fields around the house were full of lush greenery and pumpkins. Carolyn had to go and feed a neighbours cats ( one of which had gone AWOL the day before) so I sat outside, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine and getting to grips with my book
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Black swan on the lake ‘ Free Food for Millionaires ‘ ...... unaware that as the sun went down the mosquitoes were surupticiously feasting on my ankles under the table.Fancy me getting caught out that way.! When Carolyn came home ( having found the naughty cat and fed and secured both cats for the night) I met her daughter Greta. She rattled off her plans for the next day in fast Australia-young-person-speak. “ Did you catch any of that?” laughed Carolyn. I had to admit that I was way behind. Maybe I didn’t watch ‘Neighbours ‘ when I was young! Just realising that ‘this arvo ‘ means ‘this afternoon ‘. Lots of words are shortened and there are lots of acronyms! I’d better get up to speed!
I had a great sleep and had breakfast with Carolyn in the kitchen while her eldest son Hugh was there fixing a car, with his beautiful golden retriever puppy entertaining the spaniels.
Carolyn drove towards Melbourne and we parked the car at Footscray station. It’s a suburb of the city where many immigrant families find themselves when the first arrive in Melbourne, and consequently it has various and different cultures and wonderful restaurants. We hopped on a train
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Look out for the trams! and went to the middle of the city. The sky was a deep blue and the light was intensely bright as we stepped out of the dark, cool station interior into Federation Square ..... surrounded by skyscrapers. Temperatures are supposed to be 40 degrees today! We met Carolyn’s sister in law, Barbara. And started out with tea and Japanese nibbles just to keep us going. And then, to my delight we walked down the street to the Immigration Museum. My Neice Sally , has told me about it, and on a previous visit to Australia she’d traced a great-uncle ( her great-great uncle) who left London before WW1 and landed in Melbourne. She’d found George Herford and the ship he arrived on from the records at the Immigration Museum. George travelled up to Adelaide and he and a friend gained employment clearing land of acasia trees. It must have been hard work for a lad from London. But then WW1 came along and he was conscripted into the Australian army and shipped back to Europe to fight. First at Gallipoli where he was injured and then sent back to England for ‘repair’ we have a photo of him and his
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The Gold Shop and the rags to riches rescue dog friend posing in their Australian army uniforms and distinctive hats. Posted back out to fight in France and George didn’t survive the war.
On the top floor of the museum there was a fabulous exhibition about the life and work of Kahlil Gibran who wrote ‘The Prophet’. Then there was an excellent exhibition showing the different waves of immigration from different parts of the world. It highlighted the aspirations of the immigrants, how they’d been received and celebrated the diverse cultural influences it had brought to Australia. Maybe something we could emulate in the UK.
Outside into the hot sun, and we three caught a train back to Footscray where we had an excellent Vietnamese meal. Then Carolyn drove me to Geelong ( about one hour) we arrived at the address...... and all was quiet. Doors and windows open.... so we walked down the side of the house and there was Steven, Lisa’s younger brother on the back terrace -bleary eyed from his arrival this morning by plane from the UK. Lisa appeared and then gradually her family , and I was able to introduce them. Carolyn worked at Home End school in the summer of 1991 and Lisa’s first
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Jean chatting to the Gold Shop owner summer at Home End was in 1994, so they’d never met before. So we have to have a photo .... and then Carolyn and Barbara set off back to Geelong. How fantastic it was to catch up and talk about that time.
Now it’s the next stage of my Australia trip...... and I think I’ll have to give it a whole chapter of its own ......... because Lisa has given us all a surprise, and after many adventurous years of independent travel and teaching ...... she’s fallen in love with an Australian vet and I’m here to attend the wedding. But first a week of exploring Geelong and helping with the preparations for what promises to be the funniest, craziest wedding of the year! Luckily I’d already met Nick when Lisa had brought him to London to meet friends before going on to France to meet her parents. So I’d felt it was perfectly okay to accept their generous offer of accommodation and to help as an honorary ‘outlaw’ with the wedding preparations!
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Carolyn Gate
non-member comment
Sooooo enjoyed reading your blog - and recognising the places you were visiting. Fabulous to see you and Carolyn in the photos - brought a lump to my throat. My first visit to Ballarat was in January 1993, when Carolyn was picking up her veil before her amazing wedding. Can't believe that was 25 years ago!!!!!