Blogs from Sovereign Hill, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, Oceania

After a farewell from Tasmania, we sailed from Devonport on March 31, and again experienced a smooth sailing as we headed north. At 5:45am, we were awoken as the Captain brought us up to date with our arrival time and disembarkation instructions for Adelaide. A mistake, slip of the tongue maybe? Well, Adelaide was mentioned several times in the instructions leaving passengers scratching their heads and forcing open their bleary eyes. At the end of the announcement he gave the current time and date, 5:45 on 1 April 2014. So we disembarked at Melbourne despite the earlier announcement and found our way back across the city (in the dark) to our camp ground. We had 3 nights in Melbourne, but with the weather pretty average, we had a quiet time visiting the Botanical Gardens, Harbour Town ... read more

After Jemana's poor tummy keeping her up all night, we had a slow (and very cold!) start to the day, but oh so very beautiful as where we were staying had a magnificent view of the Grampians. We headed towards Ballarat but made a spectacular detour to see the rock art we'd learned about at the Brambuk centre the day before. The setting was amazing - gorgous bolders with incredible views of the Grampians in the distance. We were all very impressed by the painting too - it looked exactly like we'd expected and it meant so much more as we already knew the story it depicted from the day before. Ballarat was our next destination (after a quick stop for a photo outside the Giant Koala!) and we arrived just after lunch. We had thought ... read more

We drove from Lorne along the Great Ocean Road again, stopping at the ex-Diggers memorial, Aireys Inlet lighthouse (where the ABC television children's show 'Around the Twist' was filmed), and Bells Beach. From Torquay we travelled through Geelong into Ballarat, where we stopped for a late lunch and play at the Adventure Playground. The lake there (Lake Wendouree) was dry and we later learnt that because of this, the police had recovered quite a few discarded weapons and were able to solve several old crimes. Obviously the crims hadn't allowed for the drought when throwing the evidence in the lake! We travelled north to stay with Jeannie and Vin at Lamplough Estate, just south of Avoca. They are parents of a friend of ours and kindly offered for us to stay with them. We had a ... read more