Travelling Back in Time

---

Maureen who was also temping at the State Bank invited another girl, Debbie, Mike and myself over to her place in Ballarat for the weekend. This is located about an hour outside Melbourne (a stone's throw by Australian standards) and is famous for an old, historic gold mining settlement called Sovereign Hill.

Maureen gave us all the guided tour. Ballarat was the scene of one of Australia's bloodiest conflicts between soldiers and miners demanding a better way of life. This was known as the Eureka Stockade and resulted in the massacre of most of the miners.

Sovereign Hills is still kept as it was back in the 19th century and the people who work there still dress as they did back then. There was a school room there where we were given lessons as they would have been back then and we also had the opportunity to pan for gold. Apparently, there a small amount of gold was regularly thrown in for the tourists to find, but we were out of luck.

We noticed that all the flags flying here were Union Jacks, not the Southern Cross, so us colonial tyrants were obviously running the show back then.

After an evening in the pub and the consequential hangover the following morning, we had a look around Geelong, Victoria's second city, and a beach resort called Tourquay. I wonder where they got the idea of calling a beach resort Tourquay. For that matter if you were to look at any train time-table in Victoria most of the names were familiar from back in the colonial motherland. God save the Queen!

---

Photos

Panning for Gold
Trying to get rich in Sovereign Hill

Back to School
In a Sovereign Hill class room

Sovereign Hill Flag
Proud to be British

Sovereign Hill
The Sovereign Hill mine

Sovereign Hill View
Sovereign Hill from the mine tower