Sovereign Hill in Ballarat

We had the most amazing day at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat last week-end - and to think we almost missed it. We had to backtrack from the Great Ocean Road back for an hour and a half and have an overnight at Ballarat, but was it worth it! Thank goodness our friend Jo had told us about it - and we made the trip back.
Sovereign Hill is a recreation of the gold mining town that was there from about 1850 (there is still a working gold mine under Ballarat today - but it now goes down to about 3 thousand feet). The museum is a wonder - every detail authentically recreated and complete with 'characters' in dress walking around the town and lots of presentations from the people of the town (the blacksmith, the schoolmistress, the candlemaker, the sweetie maker etc.) to give us more insight into what life was like in Ballarat in the 1850s. We also did a terrific gold mine tour - and got to about a thousand feet underground. We spent more than seven hours there and would have happily carried on, there was so much to see and do and learn. As ever, it made us very grateful not to have been living and working then. The girls did a project describing life as an apprentice in the town - the worst was probably the blacksmith's apprentice. Kids as young as six started work at 4am, were soundly thrashed if they mislaid the tools and were entitled to just one meal a day. Bit of a contrast to life today...
It was another cool and rainy day but again that worked in our favour as it wasn't busy and we managed to dodge the rain with various presentations.
The girls favourite activity was definitely the candle-making - after a talk about being a candle-maker's apprentice (positively enjoyable compared to the poor blacksmith's boy) each girl dipped a candle. The result was a very pretty rainbow.
A grand day out.

Goldminers' camp

The smithy

Panning for gold 

Gold flakes were to be found!

Main Street

The bowling alley - wooden skittles and wooden balls

Finally - back to school

Toby pretending to be an attentive student

Learning to write with quill, ink and blotter

The Ballarat school - after the 'tent' school blew away in the 1850s the school master petitioned for a permanent building (and got it). This building is an exact replica. 

The sun peeked out occasionally

Watching a gold ingot being poured

Toby got himself a new hat - kangaroo leather!

Sweetie shop - the sweets are still made in Sovereign Hill

A great piece of 'theatre' demonstrating a 'battery' invention to explode rock in the mines

Friendly horses

The girls' favourite shop

The sweet-making demonstration was excellent - these are raspberry drops being made

We all got a warm raspberry drop at the end

Anna would have been rightly thrashed for this work, methinks...

The smithy gave an entertaining presentation 

Dodging the rain

Chatting with the locals

The candle dipping demonstration

Anna now wants a candle-making kit for her birthday

Zoe's rainbow candle

Gold down the mine - it's to be found where carbon meets quartz

Blasting machine down the mine - typically, blasters lived until about the age of 35

Warm pasties for lunch

Toby and his Cornish pasty - half meat, half apple, so you 'eat' your way from main course to dessert!

Zoe at the wheelwright demonstration

Sand and a stick was what students started to learn their letters on, then they graduated to a slate and pencil until finally they were trusted with the expensive quill and ink