Monday, March 26th, 2012: Ballarat - Sovereign Hill, a re-created gold mining town
Bob: Since we had read about the recreated gold mining boom town in a Frommer's guidebook, we decided to give that a whirl after breakfast. We were both rather flabbergasted when we entered the site because there were not any other visitors in sight, so we were surrounded by the beautifully and authentically detailed buildings and people of the 1850s era. It truly felt as if we had walked through a time warp into Victoria's gold-mining past, an odd sensation. Map in hand, we began walking the network of streets on the hillside which are completely lined with authentic-looking buildings. As in Williamsburg back in Virginia, not all of the buidings were open for visitors but most of them were. The re-enactors in period costumes added to the effect, of course, but I think the main factor in producing that time warp effect was having perfectly plausible 1850s buildings everywhere we looked. |
Monika: Frommer's had mentioned Sovereign Hill in Ballarat as one of the best outdoor museums in Australia. So, of course, we had to see it. It was only a 5 minute drive from our motel so we got there quite easily. We were immediately transported back into the 19th century at the height of the gold rush. The place was an authentic recreation of Ballarat as it looked in the 1860's. It was Williamsburg but more, since the only modern looking stuff were the tourists, and early in the morning there were few of them. So we walked among the folks from 1860. The re-enactors were from all stations, there were gentlemen, miners, women in hoopskirts, Chinese women, and not to forget the Gendarmerie. We stopped at the bakery for a lemon tart for Bob, and I noted that they had all kinds of meat pies, an Aussie specialty I am especially fond of. |
Bob: We hopped in and out of a tremendous variety of commercial establishments, a few of which were just "for show" storefronts, but most of which were true, honest-to-god working establishments. Now that just fascinated me, because I could walk through the wheelwrights, carriage makers, and foundry and look at all the old tools of the trade. They were in perfect working order. |
Monika: The photographer had an old photographic studio on wheels pulled by horses, something like what Bob's grandfather might have had. On we went, watching the wheelwright and admiring the carriages. |
Bob: In many shops like the tin smith, the artisans were already producing more of the beautiful craft objects for sale in the stores. I always enjoy watching craftsmen at work, and the tin smith certainly produced some beautiful products. |
Monika: At the copper and tin smith, I could not help myself but had to have a little copper thimble and a beautiful bracelet made from copper and brass. There also was a pub and bowling alley and we were allowed to try our hands (and yes, we were required to use both of them) at a game of 9 pins. The scoring was odd, in that you got more points if you left the kingpin standing, than if you dropped all of them. But all that was a moot point, since I knocked only five of them down, whereas Bob managed 7. Still, it was a hoot doing some old fashioned bowling. From the bowling alley, we qickly looked in at the candle maker, where a couple of kids were making their own candles. It looked like fun, but a group of schoolkids were approaching and we decided to retreat. |
Bob: We took side trips to other venues besides the businesses, of course. One stop was at the theatre where they were having dress rehearsals but allowed us to sit and watch anyway. That was just a little gem of a theatre, furnished in rich red brocades and velvets, and very small and cozy by modern standards. But considering that the actors and actresses worked without amplification, the size would have been just right for all members of the audience to still hear well. We also stopped off in one of the residential cottages, where we engaged with banter with the two ladies inside, one in the role of a widow who had taken up the profession of dressmaking, and another who seemed to be knitting something. That was pleasant, but so was our stop off in the tent of a wealthy miner, where we had a rather intense and extremely pleasant conversation with an cheerful man with a long white beard about the whole Sovereign Hill set up, the volunteers, and many other things. He told us about his house out in the country near Ballarat and his plans for starting a herd of sheep on his acreage. He was a charming gentleman, a Wiccan I gathered, and so pleasant to talk to that I had trouble breaking away to see the afternoon march of the soldiers through the town and musket firing demonstration. |
Monika: We went on to the gold casting. The guy was melting an ingot while explaining about gold casting. He then poured the liquid gold into a mold and it was surprising how quickly it cooled down. A little girl was allowed to hold it, but had to give it back again. At the end we were, of course, let out into the gold shop. But here they had something unique, amid all the expensive stuff cast from gold: a glass heart with gold flakes in it - in other words: a heart of gold. Bob, of course, got me the most beautiful one, I have been wearing it ever since. By now it was lunch time. We decided to go to the modern cafeteria to see what they had. We both got a baked potato. It was filling, but somehow I was missing something. So when we came back to the Main Street, I went into the bakery and came back with two meat pies. Now there is something filling! It was almost time for the mid-day parade and we wandered down to the miner's encampment, where we found the most interesting re-enactor, an old geezer re-enacting an old miner. He was full of stories of the mining area, but he seemed to be interested in every non-Christian religion, Celtic, Norse, aboriginal, American Indian. We really spent a fascinating half hour with him, at the end of which he blessed us. |
Bob: To close off our visit we decided to check out the recreated mines. There are two tours of old mines at Sovereign Hill. The one we did was a simple, self-guided tour not too far underground. We wandered around a re-created old mine shaft and watched a recreation of a miner discovering a big gold nugget. It was fun, low-key, and shallow enough that Monika's claustrophobia did not get triggered. The other mine tour at Sovereign Hill goes much deeper, I gather, and is an even more dramatic presentation, but it costs extra and we just didn't get around to it because we got sucked into panning for gold instead. |
Monika: We had missed the parade, but were in time for the shooting of the muskets, and picture taking with the British Redcoats. We even copped a picture with the sergeant. But now we really went into the mining area. First stop was a self guided tour through a mine, where they recreated the finding of one of the largest nuggets in the area. |
Bob: Now gold panning might strike the Gentle Reader as somewhat hokey, but let me tell you that it is somehow very exciting when you successfully wash out the rocks and other debris and actually find little specs of gold glinting in the bottom of the pan. One of the costumed re-enactors demonstrated the technique to those of us wishing to try our luck, and I finally think I understood how to do it. I used a shovel to dig up parts of the stream bed out in the middle where others might not have reached as easily, and I think maybe getting some of the less-sifted sediment might have helped us be relatively successful. Not every pan had gold flakes, of course, but those tiny, little flakes were in fact yellow and bright enough that you could clearly see them if you held the pan to the sunlight and watched closely for their glinting pressence. Such fun! |
Monika: After that came the real fun. We were allowed to pan for gold in the little creek that flowed through the settlement. And lo and behold, Bob actually found a few flakes. After that I had to keep going, until I too was successful The flakes are teeny, but they really do stand out in the general mess of gravel. There is no question, when you are successful. So we put our finds into a bottle with water, I had purchased for $1 - probably not exactly a bargain, but we certainly had fun. |
Bob: Our entrance tickets also included the Gold Museum across the street, and at the end of the day we walked across the parking lot to see that before driving back to our hotel room for the evening. The museum currently has a couple of galleries undergoing restoration (which may last about a year according to a volunteer docent), so it was about 1/2 historical exhibits from the Ballarat gold rush era, and 1/2 examples of gold, gold coins, gold nuggets, gold artifacts, and so forth. All very interesting, but even with my penchant for reading most of the descriptions we completed the museum in a little over an hour. We were, however, getting rather fatigued by that point and ready for driving home, having dinner, and putting our feet up for the rest of the evening. One pleasant surprise during dinner was a call from Karen our "Fairy Godmother" in Canberra. We chatted amiably for a while and decided we would arrive a day earlier at her place to spend a bit more time with her before heading on to our friends in Sydney and the cruise ship back home. I don't know precisely why, but we have continually met the nicest possible people in Australia and it is wonderful that some have become our friends. |
Monika: We were getting tired, so we decided to leave, but have our tickets stamped so we could come back tomorrow, if we felt like it. We still wanted to tour the gold museum today. The gold museum was across the street from Sovereign Hill and included in the admission. It contained two very distinct sections. The first section was about the goldrush era and dovetailed with Sovereign Hill. it actually showed old photographs and paintings of Ballarat of the time and pictures of the recreated buildings. Amazing how close they came in the reconstruction. But the second part was more impressive. This was inside a big vault with bank vault type doors and it include GOLD, in coins, in nuggets, in jewelry. The piece-de-resistance was the mayoral chains of Ballarat which were two circles with all kinds of gold pieces. It must be enormously heavy to wear, but for ceremonial occasions they still bring it out and have the mayor wear it (even if she is a small woman, like right now). But that was really all we were up for. It was time to go back to the motel, have some Abendessen (American: dinner) and put our feet up. |
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