We woke this morning to a cloudy, windy and rainy day. Out by the pool, a flock of ducks had gathered and throughout the front lawn there were lots of kangaroos still grazing.
At breakfast, we met Lemon Tree, the local mooch.
After breakfast, we went to the Bellfield Dam and on our way out of Halls Gap we saw some “domesticated” emu. I say domesticated because they appeared in a penned area.
The roadway to Ararat was a very pleasant drive. The entire route is treed line with pasture or crops beyond the tree line. There is a lot of sheep in the area and occasionally we’d see a kangaroo hopping through the pasture.
Our key destination for today was Ballarat. It was a major centre for the Australian Gold Rush in the 1850’s and a Ned Kelly stomping zone. We went to Soveriegn Hill museum where I tried my hand at panning for gold.
Ther is still gold being mined in the area and we saw a demonstration where a 3 troy ouce bar of gold was created. Some lucky children actually got to hold the gold bar which was worth about $108,000 AUD.
Interesting item for today: We saw our first “Koala Crossing” sign although we didn’t see any of them trying to cross the highway.
Hopper Oz Adventure 