Day 2 – Daylesford to Ballarat
Seeing as we were sleeping by a lake, had toilets but no showers and had seen several people swimming in the lake the day before, what better way to start your day than to go for a swim in the lake?
After we transformed our car into day mode (our car has a ‘day mode’ setup and ‘night mode’ setup – the latter involves everything that lived in the boot and on the back seat being flung into the front seats so we can sleep in the back), we began our drive to Ballarat – the former centre of the Australian Gold Rush that saw the countries population soar back in the 19th century.
Ballarat is a pretty town and it’s certainly got a very different feel to lots of other towns in the area. It’s managed to keep much of its original 19th century architecture, and it’s not just all restoration for tourism purposes (or at least, it doesn’t look like it!).
The main attraction of Ballarat is Sovereign Hill – a living re-enactment mining town based on the town’s beginnings as one of the major centres for the Gold Rush mentioned above. But we couldn’t do that – too expensive again!
So being the, er, ‘budget travelers’ that we are, we went to the Aboriginal Cultural Centre. I’d wanted to go anyway – Australia seems very keen to make up for it’s mistakes in the past with regards to mis-treatment of Indigenous Peoples and destruction of their habitat and lifestyle, and many of these exhibitions provide a valuable and interesting insight into a radically different culture that we could all learn from.
The Aboriginal Cultural Centre was a good move and comes highly recommended if any of you are ever there. Oh, and it’s free!
Tonight we decided to be luxurious and actually pay to stay somewhere. So we found a caravan park and settled in for the night.
The only strange thing was some woman from Doncaster (a large town in the north of England) who came into the kitchen whilst Bernice and I were playing MahJong (this is a new game that our friend Rod Baker has got us into), with her elderly mother in tow, apparently to phone her ‘Aunt Tilly’ back home.
She then proceeded to scream down the phone at the poor recipient who picked it up (presumably from an old folks home where Aunt Tilly might or might not have been eagerly awaiting her phone call. Or death, depending on your outlook.) about how she tried phoning last night, didn’t speak to Aunt Tilly, and how a dog was trying to talk to her over the phone all the way from Doncaster to Australia, that aforementioned lack of service cost her $30, oh, and to tell Tilly that they’re okay.
She went on screaming down the phone (especially about the dog), getting frustrated and obviously unaware that a little time is needed in conversations over this distance for over 40 minutes. Amazing. I think our friend was a little mad and absolutely thick as shit.
By the time I left that kitchen (which was ASAP – about 15 minutes) my head was spinning. What a time to not have a beer handy.
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