Day 17 - 23/12/13 - Slatey Creek Camp -> Ballan Vic

 I can remember going to Sovereign Hill back in 1978 like it was yesterday so I was quite excited to be taking the boys there. I have recently read Peter Fitzsimmon’s book Eureka so was also looking forward to matching up a few mental images with what it really may have looked like. I love Australian history.....err.....all two hundred years of it, and I was hoping that I might be able to make this little bit of it come alive in the boys minds.

We were up pretty early, as while we knew where we were on the map, we were going to go out ‘the other way’ which was apparently easier than the Dakar track we had come in on and wanted to have some spare time in case we had to reverse our way out. All went well except for having to enter the freeway across a somewhat ‘grassy’ on ramp, as we were sick of being on the very bumpy access road!

We were first in line and once we had departed with the GDP of a small pacific nation to enter we received a schedule of all of the shows that were on. Holy hell was my first impression and my second and third when I sat with a pen in hand thinking that I might need to create a computer program to figure out how to see all of these exhibits, some of which were only on once or twice a day, in one day! Fortunately there were only a couple of choices for the first half hour so we bolted for the candle dipping! In the end it all worked out and it was a great day and much was learnt by by us and the boys.

 
From the candle dipping and the tours of the old mining area and underground mine, the red coats and musket firing demonstrations and of course panning for gold we had a ball and didn’t stop for the 7 hours we were there.

 
 We stumbled across to the gold museum and feigned interest at their exhibits for a while, due to our exhaustion, jumped in Izzy and headed back towards Melbourne. If today wasn't tiring enough we have our massive triple header starting tomorrow but first we had to ‘book in’ to our nights accommodation at the Ballan Truck stop first!
 

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