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Published: April 2nd 2008
Pooring the gold !!
Souvereign Hill, Ballarat, VictoriaOne of those things with moving to another city (or country), is getting your friends/family to visit you. I've been quite creative in the past, even forceful (I'm not saying blackmailing here, but I could be blamed for that as well). A little triumph again this time, getting Anthony across from Sydney.... "How about going to Ballarat and surrounds".... which has a lot of history revolving around the victorian gold rush. With Anthony being a history buff, it was a straight bullseye ! Anthony organised a great weekend away to northern Victoria in 2001 right after I'd moved over to Sydney. We stayed in a small village called
Yackandandah, yes, that is an actual village name. It was a great weekend all up, so the bar for this weekend was set very high !
So, left for a drive to Creswick on Good Friday, which is where our little cottage was. Unfortunately not the most scenic road out of Melbourne, and also not the best weather ! After the hotter-than-hell heat of the past few weeks, "hell" almost litterally froze over in just a few days. Me being stubborn and keeping the top down on the car didn't help probably......
The cottage was small, nice, comfy..... and with some very tacky wall paper details. You get that from time to time. However we didn't spend all that much time there all together, even so little that we didn't have time to enjoy the jacuzzi bath ! OK, the fact that there are water restrictions (drought) might have helped in that prioritisation decision as well.
Of to Clunes for lunch, an even smaller town. I'd seen that in an Aussie travel magazine, so quite keen to have a look around. However, it was also so small that nothing was really open on this Good Friday: The pub and a coffee/candy shop.... so not much use for lunch !
Of to Daylesford, the "spa capital" of this part of the country. Very busy indeed here, plenty of long weekend guests roaming around, and almost all restaurants and cafes open ! Bingo ! Nice lamb stew, but we missed out on the green peas for some reason. The waitress was more surprised than we were. I had the biggest bowl of coffee on our way out, as in, really, the size of a good bowl of soup, but boy was
that coffee good !
Easy night at the cottage, with some wine and cheese, and a (relatively) early night. Two older gentlemen, you see.....
Saturday, after breakkie, headed into Ballarat and more or less straight down to the Tourist Info centre, which also had the
Eureka Stockade museum in it (very efficient use of public space).
We had a short drive through first, stopping of at the Prisoner of War memorial. This is right next to
Lake Wendouree, which, ehm, wasn't a lake anymore! There was no water left in it whatsoever ! So much of a display of a drought.
The gold rush in this part of the country I believe started in 1851, and was more or less controlled by the Poms.... pardon me, the Brittish rulers, who set up a system of mining licenses. Meaning, you had to pay for a license if you wanted to dig for gold, regardless of the fact if you would find any... sounds familiar.
In (very) short, the stockade was a revolt of a large amount of the miners against this system (after spending a good hour in the museum I'm delighted to inform you that there were
other reasons as well, but that is beyond the purpose of this short Blog entry thingy). So, miners throwing up make-shift barriers that wouldn't even keep sheep out, having a stand off (and shoot off) with the Poms.... sorry, the Brittish soldiers. Final score: 20 dead miners, 3 soldiers (this score is still being disputed, and went up in every other museum we went into after this), a large amount of miners thrown into jail as well. So, they lost, however the license system was abbolished soon after as well, so the stockade did have its success !
The museum building was quite interesting by itself, with a large "Southern Cross" over it in the shape of a "mining sail" (a sail the used to catch a breeze and funnel air into mining shafts, this was before they had huge aircompressors of course).
Had a lovely lunch with Naz (flatmate) who was in town visitting family, and I enjoyed my rabbit pasta (yes, I ate a rabbit for easter, pun intended).
Onwards for a walk through Ballarat, passing along a lot of grand old buildings. You could tell the Gold had done this town a lot of
Ehm, pull ???
Doorhandle in Daylesford, Victoria good. And also having a peruse through the local art gallery, which actually had a small but very good mix of old and contemporary art in it !
Sovereign Hill, take 1 Sovereign Hill is the major tourist attraction here in Ballarat: an open air life sized rebuilt mining town, with a few mines still open for tours ! They also had a light and sound show at night, so our plan was to go late in the afternoon, and stay on for that show.... plan failed, the park closes at 5 anyway, and re-opens later on again for the show. So, booked tickets for the following night, and headed back to the ranch to see about dinner!
Via a few detours and a few phone referrals, we ended up on the last available table in
Mercato, a great restaurant, back in Daylesford. If anything, this would be a restaurant worth recommending. For starters an Emu carpacio, and as main Venison, followed by a great desert sampler plate....... mwoahhhhh, and good service to boot! Slept like a baby after that meal !
Sovereign Hill, take 2 So, Sunday again back to Ballarat, and do the Hill from top
to bottom this time. It's a strange feeling someway: On the one hand it's a huge tourist trap, with people in old dress running around entertaining you, gold panning, horsedrawn carriages running up and down the Hill, displays of old baking, candymaking, blacksmiths etc etc etc. On the other hand, it's all so well done and informative, that you're willing to put up with the hordes of tourists (and kids) around you. The mine tour was quick and fun as well, and the "melting" of the gold bar at the end very tempting (you too, have an armed robber inside of you when you see more than $100.000 worth of gold...).
All up, we spent a lot of hours in there, and after that, next door to the gold museum. A bit less interesting, but hey, it was right there !
That left us with 4 hours to kill before that big light show ! So, back to Daylesford, of course, for dinner ! The Lake House this time, not as good in food or service, but we're whingeing about details now.
Sovereign Hill, the magnificent light and sound show...... Did you feel the sarcasm in that
Town hall
Ballarat, Victoria heading?? The first part of the show was a "slide show" in the theater, followed by a short stroll up the hill for a sound show, with some lights flashing onto some of the tents and the gold panning creek.... Then we were whisked away in long busses that were bought of the set of Thunderbirds I'd say, to a purpose built open air arena....
Now this is hard to explain, but imagine an area of about 200m wide by 500m deep, running up a hill, with a purpose built set on top of it, all for this light and sound "spectacular".... not seeing it, well, I can't recommend you'd actually go and see for yourself, not for 43 bucks anyway ! It reminded me of the Karl May (remember the Winnetou movies, if you're European anyway)
Festspiele which I saw as a kid. The main difference, they actually had real people and horses running through the arena, and they were cowboys and indians too ! None of that here.... just the pre-recorded sounds, and people telling the stories. A hotel going up in flames, some shots here and there, a bit of fog, and lots and lots of
talk....... Made you feel like being taken for a ride, which we were at the end, back with the Thunderbirds mobiles. But not to the end, not to the exit, not just yet....
Law and behold, there actually was a real life person playing the final act in this charade... sorry, show. Closing down the evening, unroling the Southern Cross flag of the baclony of the theatre...... And all of this took more than 1.5 hours...
Either way, all done. Souvereign Hill is a good place to visit, and you do get a lot of interesting facts thrown at you in bite sized chunks.
Monday I headed back to Melbourne, and Anthony zipped of in his new rental Lancer to head along the coast for a few days. I had a run after I got home, needed to burn some of that quality food of !
~All Good~
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