Ballarat and the Dandenongs

Im sure its my ancestors gallery
see all photos »

It was a scorcher of a weekend, and our second last one in Melbourne so we decided to hire a car and set off to explore some of Victoria. After picking up our spanking new white Toyota with essential air con we hit the highway and headed for Ballarat. The main tourist draw there is a living musuem and gold museum. It was really good and much better than I expected. There were actors all dresssed up in the clothes of long ago, I felt like I was on the set of Dr. Quinn Medicine woman. There were cavalry displays and lots of quaint old fashioned shops. We went on a tour of a mine and also got to whizz through it on a small underground train. The best part was the gold panning where we got to search through sand stone in a shallow stream to try and find gold specks. If you find one they will then put it in a small jar of water for you to take home. I was the first to strike lucky but as I posed for a photo it fell out of my hand, I was so upset! I persevered though and found another one which this time I ensured got put in the jar straight away. The gold you find is minute and you need to be very patient when looking for it but its so much fun when you find some. It definitely wouldn’t make you rich though unfortunately! We went to see a demonstration of melting gold and there was a young guy doing it. He showed us a gold bar worth $80,000 and I was thinking how Id love to own it, there would be no more worrying abut having enough travel money! Afterwards we got talking to him and he asked us did we want to hold the bar which of course we said yes to. It was quite big and heavy and had to be kept in a safe. The guy was sound he was young about 20 and I think he was just using that as an excuse to get talking to us as he was asking us lots about our travels and our boyfriends back home!

Us under the sign
see all photos »

There was a sound and light show that night which sounded good but we decided to give it a skip and headed back to Melboure to go out in town. We had some wine sitting out in the back garden, it was still so warm. Usually the temperature drops pretty quickly when it gets dark eg on Sunday there was a huge drop from around 40+ to 20+ within 20 minutes. But Saturday was a lovely balmy night. After polishing off some wine we headed over to a few guys house that my friends know from home and then we all headed into PJ's the Irish bar. We stumbled home at 5am and had to be up at 9, it wasn’t easy!

It was a scorcher of a weekend

Sovereign Hill
see all photos »

On Sunday we headed for the Dandenongs which is a famous forest region. There are really bad bush fires around Victoria at the moment so we werent sure if it would be a good idea to head to there but its quite far from where the fires are so we decided to go for it. They're saying these are the worst bush fires in history, its really sad. So much land has been destroyed and now they're threatening to destroy towns. I really pity the people who must decide whether to leave their homes or stay and try and fight to save them. It must be the hardest decision, its pretty heartbreaking. The Dandenongs was really beautiful to drive around, we had a lovely picnic in a forest that resembled something straight out of LOTR. It was the hottest day on record here for 53 years, it almost reached 42 celsius. I never wanted to leave the car, Im so glad we had the foresight to make sure we had air con!

Sovereign Hill
see all photos »

Heading on a tour of the Great Ocean Road on Saturday, looking forward to that.