Take a Step Back in Time
By James Anthony
Map of Sovereign Hill
Official website
Ballarat Accommodation
 For the current generation
of DVD and computer-game oriented kids there is nothing better than a
trip to Sovereign Hill in Ballarat to give them a bit of perspective on
life.
Take for example the 15-year-old lad down on
the mine tour who was told that 100 years ago he would have already
been working for two years pushing mine carts around. How would he like
to do that? "Not much."
The kid gave it a go, however, and struggled
to push the half-tonne trolley more than a foot. For that, he would
have earnt one pound a week - about $30,000 a year nowadays - but the
work was dangerous in the extreme.
It would be interesting to know if that
little example of the hard living conditions on the goldfields of
yesteryear would have had any long term impression on the lad, but
let's hope so.
For younger children the gold-panning is a
huge adventure and discovering little specks of gold in the pans have
them grinning from ear to ear.
It may be a little bit of hard work for
parents but, hey, you too can enjoy yourself swirling the water around
and locating the sparkly stuff for the youngsters.
Likewise, hopping on to a stagecoach for a
trip around the diggings makes you very glad we now drive around in
comfortable cars with decent shock absorbers, CD stereo systems and air
conditioning.
The hour-and-a-half trip from Melbourne to
Sovereign Hill in Ballarat is easy nowadays, but back then it meant a
long, bumpy and uncomfortable journey by horse or coach. And trust me,
the springs don't make all that much of a difference.
The living museum at Sovereign Hill takes
you back to the first decade or so of Ballarat's goldrush - where
people from all over the world journeyed in to see if they could make
their fortunes.
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