Panning for Gold

The cool change arrived over night and brought more reasonable temperatures along with it. We decided to take advantage of this and head down to Ballarat to show Ray Sovereign Hill, which is a recreation of the Goldrush days that helped build Victoria. It was excellent, and recreated the life in the town in the mid 1800s, including the bank, the bakery, the bar and the bowling alley. According to one of the costumed interpreters, the river that runs through the town is seeded on an annual basis with a fair chunk of change's worth of gold flakes every year. It used to be small nuggets but with rising gold prices that is not practical any more. The four of us panned for quite a while and have a few flakes of gold at the bottom of a small vial to show for it. We had fun and it was awfully exciting when a piece of gold not even as big as a grain of rice was found in the bottom of the pan.

We took in the mine tours, watched the pouring of a $80,000 gold brick, watched some historical reenactments of activities typical of the time, stopped in at the lolly shop, and explored the rest of the place before heading across the street to the Gold museum. By the end of the day, we all had a bit of a gold fever and drove into the sunset back across the goldfields to Halls Gap.