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

Susannah Place Museum, The Rocks, Sydney

We were really wilting in the heat on our big 'city' day on our Sydney trip and after a late lunch we were casting around for something to do out of the heat while we waited for our dinner date. We stumbled upon the Susannah Place Museum, a carefully preserved row house in the Rocks, the original working class neighbourhood of Sydney and where many immigrants settled. This row of houses narrowly managed to avoid demolition during the big bulldozing and redevelopment of the area in the 1970s and it is now a small museum that is only open to small, guided tours. It was a fascinating insight into life as an immigrant from the 1850s onwards. Our guide was careful to emphasize that the houses hadn't been so much 'renovated' or 'restored' to their original states as 'preserved' - there were many layers of different decades present in the furnishings and the decor. But what was perhaps most surprising was that one of the families had continued living in the houses (by that time mostly abandoned) until 1990! They were determined not to move out until they were confident that the houses would remain. 

My favourite story from the tour was the description of wash day for one of the residents (see the copper boiler in the courtyard below) who had a standing order at the local pub for two schooners of beer every Monday night (wash day). The beers would be ready and waiting on the bar for her. I can't say I blame her. 

The carefully reconstructed shop that was in the front room of one of the houses for many years (see the tin at the top left)

Modern cooking - this family had gas installed

The privy

One of the houses that was still lived in during the 1980s

The washing machine

Sydney - proper

Another flashback to our Sydney trip...

So we basically had four nights and three days in Sydney, and after one day at the zoo, we spent one day in centre town and one day dodging the heat at Manly Beach. 

Our second day was starting to heat up (almost 30 degrees that day) and our big day in town started with the ferry ride from Manly Beach - a boat ride bargain at about $7 a head that took us past the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge straight into the Circular Quay wharf. People commute on this ferry and I can't imagine a nicer way to get to work. 

The Sydney Opera House was simply breathtaking, and interestingly, almost even more beautiful up close. I didn't realize it's tiled with a striking mosaic effect. We still felt the heat and so had a long rest in the Botanic Gardens before exploring the old working class area called The Rocks. I think that needs a post of its own though, because we managed to find a tiny little museum about life as an immigrant worker in Sydney in the 1850s that made for a perfect little interlude in the day. The girls would have loved to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge walk where you climb to the top of the arch but the price tag was over $1000 for us to do it, and that seemed just a leetle steep. 

That evening we were in Paddington for dinner with an old friend of Toby's - Tanya Bailey and her husband Julian. They made us so welcome and we loved the sight of the fruit bats flying overhead on the terrace as darkness fell. The girls were also in heaven because Tanya and Julian have not one, not two but THREE border collies (including a 5-month old puppy). Hooray!  I think that did more to perk up the girls after a hot and exhausting day than anything else could have done. In fact, I think from the girls' point of view we could have skipped all that boring touristy stuff and gone straight to see the dogs - they were the highlight of the Sydney trip. 

Manly Ferry

On the ferry

We really were there - proof!

Voila!

We are really here

Up close

Toby and I competed for the 'arty' shot

Lovely old houses in Paddington

On our way to dinner

On our return ferry journey at night