Sovereign Hill
A couple of weeks ago we visited Sovereign Hill for the day. My older two and their dad had been a few years ago with The Scouts and raved about the fun they had, including telling the younger two that they got candy and hot dogs while there, and KFC on the way home. Blabber mouths.
We have been meaning to go as a family for years, yes years, but kept putting it on the long finger, I am good at that! Why do something today when you can put it off till tomorrow? BTW, do you know what ‘putting it on the long finger’ means? It’s an Irish way of saying putting things off indefinitely. So after maybe 3 years procrastinating about going to Sovereign Hill, we eventually got our act together.
Sovereign Hill is an open air museum in a suburb of Ballarat, Australia. It depicts a village during Ballarat’s gold rush. There is lots to see and do here including watch a smithy at work. This guy was making fire pokers in a simple forge. Cool heh?
My boys’ favourite shop. The longingly looked at all the colored sweets on display. “If only our mum wasn’t so mean, and let us eat E numbers”, they whined.
A policeman from the Gold Rush era told his story of corruption, and then scared the bejaysus out of us with a rifle shot. Boy those things are loud.
Look at this great sign from the school-house. I should print this for our school-room to keep my naughty boys in line.
I NEED a school bell to round-up my boys after lunch. How come it’s so hard, nearly impossible even, to get back to work after lunch?
One of the highlights was panning for gold in the stream.
IrishDoom was determined he was going to find some gold.
But after ages and ages and a Mammy losing her patience standing around, he decided that a huge rock would do instead. Needless to say that didn’t fly with his mum.
We imagined how tough life was back then as we played at camping. I gave my boys the usual lecture on how lucky they are not to have to work in coal/gold mines. They heard “Blah, blah, blah”. I’m positive our little talk was the highlight of their day…not!
Of course my boys had to climb every muddy hill they saw, boys will be boys after all!!
We watched a $100,00 gold bar being smelted. There really isn’t much gold in a $100,000 bar.
A spot of candle dying went down well. We now have 4 very colorful candles that are too ‘precious’ to ever use.
So after Sovereign Hill being talked up for years by my older two did it live up to expectations for my younger two? Yes, they say but they were short-changed that we didn’t stop in KFC on the way home. Poor deprived boys.