Day 4 - Strike Gold at Sovereign Hill, Ballarat

Waking up this morning, it is colder compared to yesterday. We have decided to go northwest towards Sovereign Hill, located at Ballarat Town for Gold Panning!

Let me recite some history in brief about this "Gold Hill". Sovereign Hill recreates Ballarat’s first ten years after the discovery of gold in 1851 when thousands of international fortune-hunters rushed to the Australian goldfields in search of riches. By day, Sovereign Hill is where Australia’s history comes to life! It's just like stepping back in time – from the hustle and bustle of Main Street where costumed ladies and gents parade their new-found wealth, to the excitement of the Red Hill Gully Diggings where you can pan for REAL gold.

Allright, enough of historical story above. We started our journey around 11am from Melbourne to Ballarat town via Western Freeway. The journey is about 110km which took us about 75 mins or more appropriately from Glen Waverley, it is about 120 min, which is 2 hours.



At about 1.30pm we reached Sovereign Hill. Uncle Martin bought us the entry ticket - $ 37.50/pax and without waiting, we rushed into and started our Gold Panning journey.

We were provided the map of Sovereign Hill, and to our astonishment, it is BIG. We started to worry whether we are able to conquer every place stated in the map. Anyway, this didnt burn our desire to enjoy the time around this old town being built to show the younger generations on how their predecessors erk their way to live.



The first sight we saw are those Chinese Camp around the Gold Panning area. These camp are really classical and it shows how's the life of the Chinese Miners.






Just beside it, it was the Gold Panning area, we can see there were alot of young school children panning for Gold! Infact, there are on a learning trip provided by their school. Australian education emphasize on exposure. As the old saying say, "You listen you forgot; but, you do you remember". These youg kids are so good in panning. I did asked them on how to pan as well.





Let me share with you all.
4 steps:
1. Find where is the gold
2. Submersion
3. Panning
4. Separation and Retrieval

Do you all understand the 4 steps above? I think you are not. Want to know the answer?
The answer is, do visit Sovereign Hill. :P

Allright, just joking. Let me guide you all.
Step1, Since gold is much heavier than water (about 19 times heavier), the gold stays on the bottom and gets caught in the sand in slow moving areas around bends of the stream and along the shore. It also tends to get stuck in small crevices in rocks and wedged in pieces of wood. Try to find places like this along the stream.



Step2, After that put about 4 handfuls of material into your gold pan. Submerse the pan in the stream. While holding the gold pan under water, move the pan in a circular motion so that the lighter materials will be carried out of the gold pan. Don't move it too rapidly or you may lose gold along with the rocks and sand. Keep doing this until about half of the material in the gold pan is gone.

Step3. Lift the pan out of the water and begin swirling it around with it tipped slightly to the side where the riffles are. When all the water is gone dip the pan into the water again, bring it back out, and start swirling again. Keep doing this until nearly all the material in the pan is gone.

Step4. Use a suction pipet to spray water into the pan and seperate any nuggets or flakes of gold from the sand in the bottom of the gold pan. The pipet is also useful to suck up small flakes of gold and deposit them into a display vial or other container. If you didn't find any gold, don't worry. It takes practice, patience, and a little luck to find, but keep trying. There's nothing like finding gold in the bottom of your gold pan!

Interesting right? We did tried out, but time is limited. After the gold panning, we made our way to the Gold Smelting Works to see how an $ 80,000 pure ingot being poured! This is no joke. I will not describe much in this, a picture show a thousand words. When you all see the picture you will undertand what I mean.


After the show, we took sometime around the store and we did bought some souveniers of real gold for our rememberance. We made a Gold Plated Coins at $10 each with our love message written on each gold coins.




Besides that, there is a machine to calculate on how much we are worth in gold based on the calculation from our weight. Just to share with you all, I am worth $2,148,845.06 and connie is, $1,394,864.34. Astonishing! We have a valuation certificate too. So dont play play! Best in Melaka and Batu Pahat, and some people say Muar. Haha.

After that we continue our photography journey around Sovereign hill, where we visited the Red Hill Mine, Bowling Center, Tinsmith, church and etc...









In addition, there some free coaches ride around Sovereign Hill. I can't describe ever place we went, as it is too many. But, the photographs below will explain everything. So enjoy reading..



At about 5pm, we have to leave for the Gold Musuem located opposite Sovereign Hill as the closing time for both of them is 5.30pm amd 5.00pm respectively.

The Gold Museum extends Sovereign Hill's story of Ballarat a majestic provincial city built on the wealth derived from the great Australian gold rushes of the 1850s. The rest are just histories.

We managed to capture a picture with the statue of Sir Henry Bolte, the founder of this musuem. Salute!

Pictures are more interesting! So enjoy seeing the pictures as per below.. :P

We had our dinner at Sofia restaurant back at Glen Waverley at about 8.30pm. It was a italian pasta dinner. The dinner was quite nice and it was not a too tiring day for us and we off to bed early today. Good night...