Sovereign Hill

Saturday, 20 September 2014

The Swans are in the Grand Final!!!

 

Chinese garden

Chinese shop

Temple

Chinese lanterns

Yes, no, maybe???

Red Hill Mine

That's $160,000 worth of gold being poured

That's part of the process in making humbugs

Humbugs!

The candle maker

First, choose a coffin,

then a hearse.

A moment of reflection in the Methodist Church

Not sure about the bowling action

Resetting the head

Boris and Leslie

Masonic Temple

Waiting to be served ...

 ... while listening to the music.

Doctor's surgery

Motley lot of troopers

Ballarat miners' cottages

Miner's cottage at the diggings

Cobb & Co coach

Another cold day, but very pleasant in the sunshine this afternoon.  We spent most of the day at Sovereign Hill, thinking it would be very crowded on the first day of the school holidays.  Not many Australian tourists there at all, in fact not many of any sort of tourist there at all this morning.  I would say probably about two thirds of the visitors were Chinese tour groups, left on their own for a few hours.  With the obvious influx of Chinese visitors, all the signage is now dual language, the Chinese village has been extended and there were even special Chinese language demonstrations.

Although we have been here before, the day was very enjoyable, especially with the new exhibits.  The self guided underground mine tour was thrilling, with the voice of a Cornish miner directing us through the very dimly lit tunnels to his workings and we were lucky enough to be present as he discovered the Welcome Nugget.

The photos can really speak for themselves.

Following the visit to Sovereign Hill, we crossed the road to the Gold Museum, which contained a lot of gold coins and an interesting section on the early days in Ballarat.