Going for Gold?

Although a documented Citizen and Freeman of the City of London, the greatest city on earth, Mike is an Essex boy at heart.  Now when a town with the name of Maldon pops up on the map, well, we've just got to go and take a look.

We found Maldon to be a delightful little town, named in 1856 after the Essex town.  It grew to a population of about 30,000 during the gold rush and is now about 1,600.  Mike discovered a Chevrolet truck dating back to 1928 which was still in use. 

On again and Kim navigated us to Ballarat, another gold rush town, although this one remains a sizable place today.  On the way we passed Cricket Willow, which grows the timber for cricket bats.  We didn't stop – everyone knows that the world’s best cricket bat willow comes from Essex. 

At Ballarat we played tourists and spent the day at the Sovereign Hill gold mining town.  Whilst nothing like a theme park, it does seek to re-enact life at it was in Victorian times.  It would be so easy to ‘disneyfy’ it which would be awful, but instead they've done a really good job of retaining the authenticity without going overboard on gimmicks.  We thoroughly enjoyed our day there and I leave it to these photos to give you some idea of what we experienced.

And yes, we did find some grains of gold.  I’m not saying how much but suffice to say that a new Rolls Royce remains on hold!

Our day finished with a visit to the Gold Museum which was interesting but after a very active day, rather lost its lustre.  Funny how you can quickly tire of gold!

Wednesday, the following day, we motored on through places with biblical names such as Jordan and Ararat.  We found no Ark although we did find a main street lined with grape vines and a really good coffee shop.  Now wine is mentioned quite frequently in the bible but I'm pretty certain there's no reference to coffee.

We headed into an area known as Great Western and passed acre after acre of vineyards.  After a brief stop at the Seppelt Winery to check on their Sparkling Shiraz we continued into arable farmland which showed little but fields of golden stubble, mainly grazed by sheep which eat the remnants of the wheat and barley after harvesting – it’s all very efficient farming we were told.

We camped next to the Giant Koala.  He didn't look too impressed.  The feeling was mutual as the campsite was, shall we be polite and say, ‘not up to the cost’.  And Mike was bitten by a bull ant.

Still, the golden sunset was lovely.

Although our bush camping might be described as basic, it’s not uncomfortable as Kim will testify.  By the way, that’s Mike’s wine on the table so hands off.

And no, that’s not a gold block at the back of the Land Rover, just a waffle board to keep down the dust (which is not gold coloured).  Tomorrow we take a bit of a hike to the Pinnacles so we'll need a good night’s sleep.  G‘night all.