Day 18

Sue & Adam

This day was absolutely perfect from start to finish.

We got up early and headed up to Ballarat (about a two hour drive at warp 9). There we had a quick lunch at Pizza Hut and headed over to Sovereign Hill.

Sovereign Hill is an open air museum situated in an early gold diggings area. It portrays the way of life from 1851 to 1861.

From 1851 to 1855 thousands of people came from all over the world to gather up the surface gold found in Ballarat. During this time the prospectors built simple shelters and there are several here to look at.

A Chinese village dated 1859 is represented here. The Europeans were very hostile towards the Chinese workers and as a result the Chinese community had to be protected.

The buildings and businesses of the township are based on ones which appeared in the late 1850's. The shops are all staffed by people in period costume and craftsmen are working at their trades. The souveniers purchased at Sovereign Hill are made there by the craftspeople. We purchased so many souveniers here we could hardly carry them back to the car.

We took at tour of an old mine dated around 1861. We walked down an old mining tunnel and looked at the safety cages leading to the shafts of the mine. The mine shafts are quite deep and flooded so machinery constantly pumps water out of the mine. We saw the machinery that pumps the water and several displays depicting mining life. We found out the miners made good money but died by the age of 50 due to lung diseases.

After the mining tour we panned for gold in the Red Hill Gully Diggings. Adam was lucky and found a tiny nugget in the stream. We had it valued at $7.

We hit the gift shops on the way out then left this wonderful tourist attraction.

We got back to Warrnambool late (around 7:30 pm) so we stopped at a Tavern to get a pub meal. Amanda was amazed that when she ordered fillet mignon she actually got two fillets instead of one. I found it absolutely amazing that four people could all eat huge steak dinners with all the fixings and the bill is under $60.

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