Have fun. (:
SATURDAY 20TH DEC
So we woke up bright and early on Saturday morning, and set off for Ballarat with the car trunk filled to the brim with sleeping bags, clothes, food etc. etc.
I brought my Twilight along! :D
I was actually already really close to finishing the book, they were already playing baseball, and I wanted to finish it before I forgot the story by the time I came back.
But somehow, I left it in the same bag as some caramel cake and it got slathered with caramel all over.
Now Edward smells like caramel.
Isn’t that even better?
He looks and smells great.
Anyway, so we reached our home away from home for the weekend – Eureka Stockade Holiday and Caravan Park.
Well, we didn’t exactly have a caravan (How cool would that be?!) but we had a tent and they provided us with camping sites.
Actually, “camping” would mean sleeping in the middle of the forest, cut off from all civilization and not having any facilities with us at all.
But this was more like a chalet actually, because there were toilets, shower rooms, laundry rooms, game rooms and even electricity plugs.
We could have brought our microwave oven over and still used it.
But no matter.
At least here we would have absolutely no chance of meeting a wild boar from the forest trying to eat us.
So it was time to set up the tent!
It was so cool okay.
First it was totally flat on the floor.
Then we had the skeleton.
After which, we covered it up with the nice and pretty skin and….
Viola! Nice and huge tent for us to sleep in comfort. (:
(This picture was taken at night, long after we put the tent up. We did NOT take the whole day to set it up. :D)
It was tall enough for me to stand in too!
Which is quite good actually, because it will be quite horrible if I got a tent which was only 1 metre in height, I’ll practically be crawling inside the whole time.
Anyway, our first destination was Sovereign Hill!
It’s practically the only major attraction in Ballarat.
It is like the Sentosa of Singapore, except well, it wasn’t as big. And it wasn’t an island.
Sovereign Hill was actually a small “town” that they had built totally from scratch, using old photos as references.
It was made to look like a town from the 1800s, when the Gold Rush first started there.
It was actually really pretty in real life, and the photos don’t do it justice.
Since we’re such amateur photographers and all.
There were people wearing traditional costumes walking around everywhere, but I didn’t get a chance to take photo with them. ):
We caught a group of soldiers marching around, but they don’t even march as well as our UGs from BBSS so it wasn’t very attractive. :D
Like I said, there aren’t that many substantial photos, so all these random ones will do.
First, we watched the pouring of gold into a rectangular mould.
Look at the RED HOT LIQUID gold, it is damn cool okay.
Although I didn’t really get to see it because I was busy aiming my camera at the person.
The molten gold solidified in seconds, and here he is! Holding it!
We saw the blacksmith at work....
Horse carriages.
The bakeries.
Oh, I saw this poster pasted somewhere, next to this giant weighing machine and found it quite amusing. :D
They had the Blood on the Southern Cross show at night, and frankly, I was quite surprised because there was not a SINGLE person acting in the show.
It was purely lights and sounds in an outdoor space, although it IS quite a nice idea, but it got kind of draggy in a while.
Some of the effects were quite cool though.
SUNDAY 21ST DEC
Headed over to the Gold Museum (admission to which came together with the Souverign Hill ticket) first thing in the morning, where we drooled all over the gold displayed there.
I mean, it is called a Gold Museum, so everything there was shiny and… yellowy?
They had displays of the largest gold nuggets ever found, gold coins, gold everything.
Largest natural gold nugget ever found in the whole world.
It is called Welcome Stranger.
Some other nuggets, about which I didn't bother to read about at all.
I only like Welcome Stranger.
These were some of the paintings of the 1850 era that was displayed there and they were really nice. :D
OH HAHAHAHAHA there was this small section of the museum where they promoted some organization, and they had displays of the member countries.
AND SINGAPORE WAS INSIDE.
Check out the Singapore national costume:
The dress looks kinda weird and nothing like what the SIA air stewardess wear okay.
HAHAHAHA.
Next, we went to this Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in the middle of some random park somewhere.
We happened to pass by it while driving around anyway.
So they had this humongous slab of rock where they printed the names of every single ex-POW.
It was quite exciting to see that there was a Lynn there (although I am aware that it’s not actually very nice to have my name as an ex-war prisoner but who cares. That’s my name printed on a national memorial.)
The last place we went was Kryal Castle.
It even had a moat and all!
It was quite disappointing because I thought it would be like those huge castles in England but it turned out to be relatively tiny.
But it was still cool because I got to be the King (Queen) for the day! (More like for the minute actually but whatever. Details are unnecessary :)
There were actually a lot of rooms and displays inside, but as with Sovereign Hill, they don't look as nice in the photos as in real life.
Hehehehe.
So with this, we concluded out camping trip to Ballarat with a flourish, and rode home with our gleaming white horses. :D
Heh heh. :D
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