BALLARAT

Alluvial Gold was first discovered in Ballarat in 1851and therefore it became a global phenomenon, with potential gold seekers sailing from the four corners of the world.  Today Ballarat's streets are lined with some of the finest buildings in Australia due to the wealth that was produced.
We settled into our Caravan Park - titled The Eureka Stockade - and on the next day we tootled up to the Sovereign Hill complex, an Outdoor Museum, covering 25 hectares of a former gold mining site, a not for profit community based, cultural tourism display.
It displayed a community as it was in the Goldmining boom.
Commencing with the Gold Museum we toured, panned for gold,  watched a play being rehearsed in a wonderfully decorated theatre - not unlike our Theatre Royal - watched sweets being made, candlemaking, observed a school in which a group of students from a school in Melbourne - attired in period costume - sat and were taught for a day - in the old fashioned way, with old fashioned values, and was told that schools from surrounding states had booked out the school for the next year and a half for their children to attend for a day.
Redcoat 'soldiers' marched, fired their rifles, we watched a blacksmith,  a grocery store, gift shops, saddlery, Post Office, apothecary, printery, photogropher's rooms, jeweller, gold smelting, tinsmith.
There was a wheelright and coachbuilder, bakeries, cafes, a hotel bar.
Red coated soldiers marched and fired their rifles and were lots of other things too numerous to remember.
We spent 2 days exploring Sovereign Hill and overall 4 nights in Ballarat and sadly the time came to move on although I would love to come back as I believe there are still wonderous things to see and do.
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