Sovereign Hills

Wednesday, 10 October, 2012 Sovereign Hill, Ballarat

               

 Bob and Judy had decided during the day on Tuesday to go ahead and brave the cold and take me to Sovereign Hills in Ballarat. About an hour and a half drive to the gold-mining town theme park.

               

It's made up of several main streets filled to the brim with 'old time' shops and business - all of which are still 100% functional including:

a wheelwrightery

a confectionary

Multiple steam engines/boilers

restaurants

foundries

blacksmithy

battery house

gold coin press

gold purifying demonstrations

a stream where you can pan for gold

a replica chinese gold camp

Four favourite things were:

The first thing I did was go to the wheel-wrightery. In here were the industrial age machines, and the guy presented them in a manner advertising the wheels and the new systems. It was hilarious! The very, very best part though, was that all of the machines were powered by steam engine - literally!

I saw how all the machines worked to create the wheels. Including cutting the wood, putting it together, drying it, banding it for shipment, etc.

Next, I went off to the Boiler Room to see the spectacularly huge boilers! They each hold 17 tonnes of water for the steam engines, and there are four working steam engines on site.

Next I went to the Battery House. A Battery is a huge crushing machine to smash the rock and quartz to get the gold out of it.

AND it was powered by a steam engine! Right there! I was the only one in the Battery House, so the guy offered to take some closeup pictures of the engine. So cool!

                Next favourite was probably the gold pouring - they demonstrate hose they purify gold. The gold gets heated to 1200 degrees in order to melt. Within seconds after pouring, though, the gold hardens at 900 degrees. However, that's beyond the flashpoint of wood, so if you touch the wood to it, it immediately catches on fire. He quenched it in water and held up the pure. gold. bar. $170,000 worth of sparkles. He let two kids from school groups hold the bar. It was insanely cool. It's amazing how much pure gold actual does glitter.

                After the park we went to the gold museum with a great history of the gold rush and the use of gold coins and coins in general. We also went to the Ballarat Botanical Gardens, which holds the Avenue of Prime Ministers - which holds busts of every prime minister up to Gillard (she just has an empty stand so far). Stopped for pizza for dinner on the way home and it was absolutely lovely!