February 20, 2024

Ballarat to Melbourne

We get up early to go visit Sovereign Hill which is an old gold rush town museum.

It is very interesting to see how the very first settlers lived once they arrived in Ballarat.

Peter tries his luck at the gold washing and found a few gold specks!! Supposedly every day a handful af gold dust is mixed with the stones and gravel.

We take a self guided tour through one of the mines where someone was very lucky and found a huge chunk of gold.

There is also an opportunity to see how the gold was cleaned and then melted it into one of the gold bars.

All thru Sovereign Hill we can see how the people used to live. We can see how they used to build the beautiful old coaches and harnesses for horses. There is an old fire station, an old pharmacy, a general store and let's not forget the saloon where the thirsty miners had a drink after a long day's of work.

Supposedly only roughly 3% of 100 became rich and another 50% were able to live of their findings. The rest lost everything.

Later in the afternoon we drive back to Melbourne. We are invited for a steak dinner at Naiomi and Ian. We spend a nice evening with them and Dave who are good friends of Ruth.

We enjoy sleeping in a real bed for a change!

This last pic is an ice box!!