Country towns, Aussie Schools and Surfing Dolphins

The large country town of Ballarat has been a booming gold-town since the 1850s, but unlike many others of the period, is still profitable today, with an estimated 60% of the gold still to mine. It is also home to the fantastic Sovereign Hill, a replica 1880s gold- mining town, where we spent a full day learning about life in the settlement.

We had a brilliant underground mine tour, complete with underground trolley ride, the boys made their own candles and we watched them melt and pour a $160,000 gold bar (one lucky child even got to hold it – unfortunately not ours!).

We did our own bit of gold-panning here and managed to find a few flakes to bring home! In the evening they have a light and sound spectacular, reliving the Eureka Stockade events called ‘Blood on the Southern Cross’. It was brilliant being able to talk about miners rights, licence fees and injustice with the boys which ended up covering aspects of political representation, suffrage and protest too. Another curriculum box ticked!

 

 

By special request of the boys our next stop was Glenrowan, scene of the capture of the infamous Bushanger Ned Kelly (we blogged about his incarceration in Melbourne Gaol). The Glenrowan Inn, where Ned and his gang were holding hostages, was stormed by government soldiers and after a lengthy shoot-out many of the gang were killed and Ned was finally taken into custody. We visited a small but thorough museum here and took our picture with the giant Ned Kelly statue.

Then it was a long drive up to Wagga Wagga, across miles and miles of farmland, where the landscape does not change for hours, and the roads are tediously straight! This is where you really get a feel for the size of Australia, as it was merely half a page on our road map book. We stayed in the large country town of Wagga with my gorgeous friends, Jen & Darren and their two hairy, lovable Golden Retrievers, Bailey & Ruby. As you can imagine Ollie was in dog-lover heaven. We had beautiful weather (this IS winter), got the BBQ on and had a nice glass of wine sitting outside over-looking their lovely garden. Thank you for making us feel so welcome!!

 

 

 

 

 

Cameron: When we got back to Sydney Mum & Dad had arranged for Ollie and I to go to a primary school for the day. I was in Mrs Bennett’s class, where I made some really nice friends. The school was similar to mine in England, but there were a few differences, as they do more outside such as eat lunch, have assembly and Ollie’s class was doing some gardening. I learned a couple of new ball games and we did science and maths lessons too. They also got me to read out parts in a story so they could listen to my English accent. Ollie spent the day with Mrs Cafeiro and her class and he said it was awesome! Thank you to everyone at Kurrajong Primary School, and especially Mr Montgomery, for giving us such a great experience. Aussie schools are brilliant!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also fit in
few more family & friends visits, sharing great food and wine with the Steinhof’s, Pollpeters, Dyers, Monty’s and the Stevenson families. It has been a real bonus to have enough time this trip to see everyone. Unfortunately we also had a funeral to attend, as my lovely Auntie Sylvia passed away, a very sad event, but it was good to be able to attend and pay our respects in person.

Before leaving Sydney we saw Vivid, a light show held in Sydney where all the iconic buildings such as the Sydney Opera House are illuminated in a variety of coloured and patterned lights. We also took a drive up to Palm Beach, where they film Home and Away, unfortunately there were no soap stars filming that day, but we watched a pod of dolphins playing in the waves, so it was quite a beautiful and a fitting way to say goodbye to Sydney for this trip!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On our way back to Brissy, we had a few days in Tuncurry, the Great Lakes region of the NSW coastline. The weather wasn’t great but that didn’t stop up hiring a cabin right on the water that we could tie our boat up to. Fishing is fast becoming a favourite family past-time, even if we still haven’t got the ‘big one’ yet! And finally a long beach walk and dinner stop with the Mason family near Byron Bay, once famous as the place Crocodile Dundee called home. Again watching dolphins off the beach, surfing the waves. This really is a beautiful coastline.

 

PS Thank you once again to the fabulous Brown’s for their house- don’t worry guys we haven’t moved in permanently (yet!!).

 

This was an unusual sight. We saw  it from the car near Castlemaine, obviously foxes are a problem here (or at least they were?).