Ballarat

Horse pulled thingy
Grand buildings in the town
Tenst were the miners lived

Carriage
Main street
Horse and carriages

There was a row between the actress character and the journalist character and it ended up in fisty chuffs
Policemen characters stepped in
Tin store

Lift used to ferry people up the mine
Old Hotel
Horse and Carriage ( i sat next to the driver for my ride)
Town from up high
Town from up high
Modern day sovereign hills
Inside the apothecary
Mad doctor
Soldiers parading through the town
The soldiers stood for about 309 minutes whilst everyone clamoured to have there photo take with them
This one was particularly miserable

Panning for gold
Down the mine
Down the mine

Gold in the rocks
Down the mines
Train

Victorians (people that live in Victoria, Oz) became very wealthy and the population exploded due to gold that was found in them there hills.... I therefore had to take a trip to one of the original 1800 gold rush towns. Ballarat is about an hour away from Melbourne on the train. Near Ballarat is a recreation of the original township as it would have been in the mid 1800's. It consists of a couple of streets with reproduction buildings and roads. The roads have horse and carriages that take you around the township and the old fashioned shops and businesses that are staffed by actors in 18th century clothing.

Its a pretty amazing place really as the town is above the actual mine that was dug by the miners. In the river you can actually pan for gold (i didn't find any gold though). The place was voted the best tourist attraction in Australia last year and its easy to see why. The place really tries to recreate the atmosphere of the 1800's. The actors every so often put on a bit of a show and there were arguments between characters (actors tried to do an old English accent), soldiers parading, a school with school kids all dressed up, farm animals etc. The township smelt of horse poo and it was really muddy and messy. I had a killer "Devonshire tea" (Cream tea) that only cost about 5 pounds. The restaurant had proper linen, crockery and cutlery. Really good scones....ummm.....

I weighed myself in the jewellers and I weigh about 2 and a half million dollars worth of gold!!! And there was me thinking that I was priceless...

The mine was open to the public and I took a guided tour. The miners that worked down there worked in hazardous conditions (to say the least) but the pay was quite good and so many people were attracted to the mine (quite a lot of Cornish came down here). At the end of the tour we got a ride back on the train through the tunnels. The train ride was quite fast and injected a bit of adrenaline into the day!!! The only downside was the abundance of badly behaved kids that were everywhere....