After being insprired by John to find gold we bought a prospecting licence at Maryborough, set up in the National Park and I took the boys prospecting. Nope, we didn’t find anything L But had a nice afternoon and the moon was amazing that night – I got some pics.
We left early and went to town, Maryborough, to do some washing and then headed for Stawell – our sights set on meeting Tim’s parents. He was our neighbour in Charters Towers. We arrived at his parents place around lunch time and had a chat and decided to squeeze a quick trip into the Grampians in.
We headed out towards Halls Gap and did one walk – Fyans Creek Loop and then drove out to Boroka Lookout. The walk was a little boring but we did see lots of birds, kangaroos and emus. The lookout was spectacular and gave you fantastic view of the formation within the Grampians.
We returned to Tim’s parents place and had a lovely home cooked roast meal and a nice evening.
We woke the next morning and headed for Ballarat – hoping to do Sovereign Hill and stay there the night. We did make it to Sovereign Hill and paid the $100 entry as everyone had told us it was worth it.
Verdict – it was ok. Definitely not $100 but interesting to see how people lived and everything back in the gold mining days. Tips to improve the place: more information plaques on each area so you knew what it was about. Thank god I wasn’t pushing a pram around as it was dirt and uphill! The boys did enjoy panning for gold for many hours and got what was deemed to be “quite a lot”; about $5-$7 worth of flakes. One thing was that the gifts you could buy were fairly well priced.
We left Sovereign Hill and went to the lake and parked up there and cooked dinner. It was really nice, tad chilly but the boys had heaps of fun playing on the massive playground.
We left Ballarat refusing to pay the ridiculous cost for a site and headed for Melbourne. We found a BP Roadhouse and stayed there the night and had a nice hot shower.
We got to Melbourne early and headed straight for the Caravan and Camping Show. OMG we walked all day, mostly without the kids, and we didn’t even see all of it; even after limiting only looking at family vans. There was sooooo much there to see...
We then took the van and parked along the waterfront at St. Kilda and had dinner. We watched an amazing sunset and heaps of kite surfers along the foreshore. Rod did a good deed for a lovely lady, jump starting her car, and she gave him 6 beers. She also told us about little penguins that come near the jetty in front of us on dark. So we dragged ourselves out there for a look. Very cute. It was very windy and cold.
Very exhausted we made easy dinner, cuppa soups and spaghetti and decided that we didn’t want to sleep where there were junkies and alcoholics wandering around and left to stay at another BP Roadhouse 10km out of the city. Needless to say, I slept well after two days of constant walking, until the 4.30am wake up of the alarm!
Tassie here we come.
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