Sovereign Hill

Some of my loyal readers will remember visiting Sovereign Hill with me in August 2001. Not much has changed. But then, when you’re talking about a site that recreated a 19^th century mining town, not much has to change.

Sovereign Hill is on the outskirts of Ballarat, a goldfields town about 100km north west of Melbourne. The place is billed as an open air museum. You pay $40, enter through the unprepossessing information centre and emerge onto a street that really does look like it could be Victoria c. 1850.

There are wooden shops will false fronts and a line-up of businesses from chemists to sweetie shops. Since it’s a visitor attraction, all of these shops flog their wares to the tourists but, to be fair, a lot of the goods for sale are made by craftspeople on site.

Costumed interpreters roam the streets and I’ve got to say I enjoyed having handsome man tip their hats at me. Is this something we could bring back, please?

It was Steam Day the day I was there, so there was a parade of puffing vehicles going up and down Main St.

I walked up Main St in the rain, admiring the shops. I took cover under a porch and listened to the steam organ across the street. With perfect timing, the organ started playing Singin’ in the Rain just as the drizzle turned into a deluge.

How perfectly Wild West is the foundry?

Eventually the rain got so hard that I went inside for shelter ... into a funeral parlour as it turned out.

Thinking I would be better off underground, I went on a tour of one of the mines. Even though the guide who sent me down reassured me I was on cctv the whole time, it’s still a bit creepy on your own in a dimly lit tunnel underground….

Really, the afternoon was an exercise in duck and cover, as I ran from one shelter to another. The tent that doubles as the Catholic Church was a bit leaky, but I amused myself by taking photos of the raindrops. (See, it really was very rainy.)

Then I walked down to the miners’ camp where the small scale diggings were. A few brave souls were panning for gold in the rain.

A quick visit to the Chinese temple and then I decided I’d had enough of getting wet.

What to do?

I found a table by the fire in a nice tea room that served scones. Nom nom nom.

Sovereign Hill is worth a visit, but it’s definitely more fun when it’s not raining.