Easter 2001 at BallaratI have a fair memory for experiences, but a poor one for dates. I have memories that just float around in my head, surfacing from time to time; but unless I have something to tie them to, they tend to drift back into the depths to be forgotten again. A 1989 trip to visit family and attend a convention in New Zealand is one example. I do have a couple of photos and some fragmentary documentation, but that's not enough to conjure the ghost. That trip report will never be written.
For decades, my Easter 2001 in Ballarat was another lost memory. I did not then have the iPaq Pocket PC that became my irreplaceable travel companion for later trips (I bought my first iPaq in June 2001), but I did carry an APS camera that weekend, and I used it, and I had the photos developed. And then they sat in a box for over 20 years, until one day I decided to try scanning some of my old APS prints, and as I painstakingly placed each bright image on the scanner bed, the trip sprang to life both before my eyes and in my memory.
I know of not one surviving word about this trip that I wrote back in 2001. There are probably some tickets, some receipts, even some words, in a stack of paper somewhere around here. I have not been able to find them. And so this account is based almost in whole on some 230 APS photos, and the memories that surfaced once I had something to bind them to.
The APS film camera was not set to record the time or day each photo was taken, although the index card for the photos gives me the date range for each roll of film. In writing the trip report I had to approximate times based on context, sun angle and the distance covered since the last photo. I used “Show more dates” in Google Street View to “walk” my routes, comparing my photos with what I could see in the oldest date (2007) captured by Streetview. Sometimes this provided useful data to tease out more memories and more context; sometimes it just gave me a better estimate of the location. However, all times used here should be treated as tentative and subject to wide later adjustment, even to being taken on another date.
I usually pepper my trip reports with photos, and used to add photo pages, but winterknell.net doesn't have the bandwidth for that, so I've cut down the number of photos and instead provided links to web pages with more info on some of the more interesting items. Linkrot will no doubt nibble away at these, but I have tried to select websites that have been around a while and should survive longer.
This trip was a trial run for my Great Trains trip in August 2001. Its core was to see old Ballarat, with a primary focus on the gold-rush era.
12-04-2001 — Maunday ThursdayI took Thursday off work. That let me arrive by VLine on Wednesday night. I had already picked out a likely-looking hotel with a retro look in Lydiard Street North, just a five minute walk from the station. The “George 2000” (now “Quality Inn The George Hotel”) was erected in 1902 on the site of two earlier Georges, one of which had been the 2nd Hotel licensed in Ballarat. My room was a comfy old-fashioned single, with a nice triple-framed print of Frederick McCubbin's 1904 triptych The Pioneer arranged across the wall above the bed. It was a good base for delving into Ballarat's history.
I got up around 08:00 on Thursday. The TV in my room was showing some sort of ABC Correspondent's report on China, probably regarding the 24 US crew from the 2001 China-U.S. aircraft collision.
I had breakfast on the balcony of the George, which overlooked Lydiard Street. It's the lower balcony, with the plastic blinds, in the photo at right. After breakfast, I set out to explore central Ballarat.
Modern Ballarat is the 3rd most populated city in Victoria, after Melbourne and Geelong. Until gold was discovered in 1851, the population had been negligible, mostly just farmers and drovers; within months there were 1,000 people camped there; by 1854, 25,000 (not counting 8,000 women & children); by 1858, 60,000. After that it fluctuated, as gold was found in other areas around central Victoria. Eventually, as the gold ran low, the town stagnated; but the gold had left its mark. In 2001, the population was about 80,000 - and today it's between 115,000 and 120,000.
Like most central Victorian gold-mining towns, Ballarat has a wealth of mid-18th Century architecture, buildings completely out of proportion to the actual size of the town at the time when they were built, and so well built (aided by post-gold-rush stagnation that discouraged demolition and rebuilding) that they are still in use today. They're worth a look.
I walked down Lydiard St to Sturt St, the main drag. I turned east and walked down to the magnificent 1915 Titanic Memorial Grandstand, with its odd mix of colonial and Chinese architecture
After buying a few necessities, I wandered back to drop them off at the hotel, then went back out and crossed Lydiard street to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, almost directly opposite. The gallery holds the 1854 “flag of the Southern Cross" (aka the “Eureka flag”), rather scissor-tattered now but originally about 2.6 x 3.7 metres. The blue body is fine lightweight wool. The cross is off-white cotton twill. The five 8-pointed stars are fine cotton lawn, as used in handkerchiefs; the largest is about 65 cm across. The flag (or re-imaginings of it) has been used and misused for so many causes down the years that it felt odd to be standing in front of the original, which was both more impressive and more amateurish in execution than the modern versions.
The Art Gallery held quite a number of other works I liked, including “The wheat field”, 1876 by John Clayton Adams and “Hesitation”, 1886 by William H Bartlett.
I eventually tore myself away from the Gallery and went west down Sturt Street, passing the old Ballarat Town Hall (now the Visitor Information centre), a magnificent pile of stone with four clock faces in the tower and a Diamond jubilee statue of Queen Vickie on the median strip in front./p>
I continued down the north side of Sturt St, past Saint Patrick's Cathedral (1891), the Horse and Mule Memorial and the Ballarat Cenotaph. I eventually turned off Sturt into Talbot St N, where I admired a nice red-painted gateway that is still there 20 years later, and looks just the same. After turning briefly into Mair St, I turned right at the first intersection (Ripon St) and walked up to Webster St, where it hit Lake Wendouree. This was originally a swamp (wetlands) called Yuille's Swamp, and a few years after my visit it temporarily dried up completely during a major drought. However, in 2001 it was a lovely expanse of water. My eye was caught by the Rustic Fountain. At the fountain I turned left and began walking around the lake. At one point a stroll of black swans came over to me looking for noms, but left disappointed.
After the 1956 Olympic Venue Memorial (Lake Wendouree was used for some water sports) I drifted away from the lake shore down Hamilton Avenue until I hit Sturt St, where I turned right and headed west again.
After about 10 minutes I reached the Arch of Victory that marked the start of the Avenue of Honour. These avenues are a feature of many Victorian towns and Ballarat's is particularly fine. There's the Arch, of course. Off to one side is a tholos holding the Roll of Honour. At the base of most trees is a plaque with the name of the soldier being remembered by that tree. I spent a while walking up and down the near end of the Avenue.
My memory fails me briefly around here, but I have pictures of a taxi driver standing by a round stone memorial with a cross and lest we forget inscription on top, and a lake in the background. Turns out this is The Weatherboard, 22 km from the Arch. I must have taken a taxi to get there, in order to witness the full length of the Avenue without walking the whole weary way.
Just on the other of Weatherboard Road from the cairn is the last tree in the Avenue of Honour. It has a large plaque at the base but I don't recall the incription. The lake nearby is Lake Learmonth, not Lake Wendouree.
I took the taxi back to town and had it drop me off near the Ballarat Tramway museum and Botanical Gardens. I took a leisurely walk through the Gardens, admiring the statuary, starting with the large William Wallace outside the Robert Clarke Conservatory. When I came by later on the backswing, a child was riding one of the very cheerful fangless lions that guard the statue, while the other lion grinned at them.
Eventually I walked back down to the lakeshore and picked up my circumnavigation of the lake to round off my day.
13-04-2001 — Good Friday
Good Friday began with an encounter with a cheerful magpie lark playing on the railing of the Burke & Wills Fountain on the corner of Lydiard and Sturt. From there, a little tired after yesterday's walking and with another big itinerary in front of me today, I walked to the bus interchange at the train station and nabbed a bus that dropped me in Bradshaw Street right outside Sovereign Hill.
I entered the site the instant it opened, and soon found myself at the Gold Pour Demonstration, where a guy shows how gold bricks were made from the extracted gold. The result was a knobby, bubbly, ugly ingot, not the polished smooth bricks we see on TV shows. The essential purpose was not jewelery, but to reduce the gold to something easily portable, of known weight and purity, and instantly revealing of post-pour modification.
From the Gold Pour I went to a Rock Crushing demonstration, the opportunity for large machines to maniacally pound large chunks of rock into rubble. It was loud. To let my ears rest, I went up the tower above to get an overview of the site. The illusion was better from above than on the street. The people in period costume, being novel to my eye, stood out; the modern tourists faded into anonymity.
After lunch, I went underground, on the Quartz Mine Tour - now apparently a “Gold Mine” Tour. This was a guided tour, with a guide dressed in period attire. There were maps of the shafts, and period posters on walls advertising period events. We got to admire the ingenious machinery constructed to pump air into the mine and water out, and here and there period-dressed maniquins showed off details of the daily grind. There was a fake gold seam and some pretty convincing holes leading down to unknown depths. It was fun, though a little claustrophobia-inducing
From the mine tour I went on a long ramble around the site, admiring some very nice coaches and a wheel-making demonstration. At one point I encountered a replica dunny complete with tiny “heart” peephole, leaning over above a slope. I was tempted to peek inside, but a boot showing under the door suggested that it was occupied. I was pretty sure it was a dummy, but why take the risk? I've spent hours in Street View trying to find that dunny, but it seems that by 2014 when the Street View was taken, such whimsies were no longer a feature of Sovereign Hill. Perhaps people kept trying to use it.
I visited the Fire House (nowadays labelled “Fire Brigade” above the doors but then bare of signage except on the doors, which were usually wide open and thus obscured the signage) and the neighbouring “Empire Bowling Saloon”. I admired the spendid hearse at Ash & Dawson, “Builders and Undertakers”. By now I was hungry and thirsty, so I stopped in at Napier's Hotel. Here I finally snapped a photo with a clock in it. According to the bar clock it's 15:53. I don't recall it being that late.
I rounded off the afternoon watching the Redcoats march back and forth and demonstrate their musketry before riding into town to snatch an hour's rest at my hotel.
I was back at Sovereign Hill that evening for their celebrated “Blood on the Southern Cross” sound and light show. I saw it again in 2016, and the 2001 version was definitely less finished, but in 2001 it was my first time and it was a spendid evening all round. Watching buildings burn themselves down to yells and screams from invisible presences was surreal. The more polished presentation in 2016 had lost some of the raw power of the original.
14-04-2001 — Holy saturdayDespite yesterday's heavy itinerary and late night, I hadn't done that much walking, so today I was rested and ready for some real distance walking. This was the day for Eureka.
I headed down Sturt St and then Bridge Mall until I hit the big Eureka flag at Bakery Hill. This was a famous spot, near which 10,000 Diggers first unfurled the Flag of the Southern Cross at the Bring Your License meeting; Licenses were burned; it was 29 November 1854, and the Eureka Rebellion had begun.
I went down Humffray St to Main Rd, then down Main Rd until it hit Eureka St, then down Eureka, pasing Montrose Cottage at 111 Eureka. In the 1950s, Eureka Street/Navigators Rd was the main road from Melbourne. The guy who built the cottage was a miner in 1854, but did not build the cottage until 1856. In 2001 it was a museum, somehow associated with the Eureka Museum. I went in to see it on the 15th, but not today.
By and by I saw a large Eureka Flag atop a building. That had to be the Museum. It was about a half hour's walk from Bakery Hill.
The exhibits were an odd mix. There was a Cobb & Co coach - “Ballarat & Geelong”. There were dioramas of 1850's Ballarat and the Eureka Stockade. There was a dull gold-toned statue of Peter Lalor.
Lalor was an interesting case. He was born in Ireland in 1827, child of a landowner who was a British MP 1832-35. The family's prosperity broke in the 1845 famine and although the parents managed, the baker's-dozen children ended up scattered across the world. Lalor arrived in Australia in 1852, first working on the railway, then haring off to join the gold rush. He was a member of an early committee petitioning changes to the way things were being done, and the day after the Bring License Meeting he was elected leader of the Rebellion, more or less by default as the other organisers didn't show up after that day's Digger hunt.
During the military attack on the stockade, he suffered injuries that later led to the amputation of his left arm. Supporters hid him until events rendered him safe from trial for sedition. So much so that he was elected to the Victorian Parliament in 1855, and stayed in Parliament, on and off, until he died in 1889, aged 62. His record in Parliament shows that the landowner in him remained closer to his heart than the rebel. William Bramwell Withers was surpised that “the folk hero should prove to be a better fighter for money and political position than for the people's rights.”
I used to walk past his house in Church Street, Richmond pretty regularly without ever realising it was his, before and after this Ballarat trip.
From the Museum, I moved on to the grounds, which supposedly contain the site of the famous Stockade. It was hard to conjure the ghost. The precise spot was never marked — even the location of the flagpole would help — and estimates of its size vary greatly. Part of the area is so low-lying that today it holds “Lake Penhalluriack”, a former sludge pond. However, the Stockade was apparently placed on the edge of “Urquhart's diggings”, a gravel pits which may have well turned into that sludge pond. A track from the pits apparently ran through one end of the Stockade. The best spot for a stockade that I found was west from the Eureka Monument on the corner of Eureka and Stawell. The second best was where some group had placed a metal flag circle, on the corner of Eureka and Rodier. In either case it could easily have been extended south to cut the Melbourne road (Eureka Street) and take advantage of the significant downward slope on the road's far side. The easiest approach for the Police, avoiding the road, would have been along the flat between the road and the pits. However, it's notable that the map produced at the trial did not indicate the presence of the Melbourne Road either within or without the redoubt.
It was a lousy spot for a fortress, but well placed for contact with the diggings and for hindering goverment communications with Melbourne.
The 1884 Eureka Monument has a tablet on it. “This tablet was created by The Eureka Improvement Committee 1923.” They didn't quite dare to take credit for the Monument itself. LOL. The yarn about the squabbles behind the siting of the Monument itself is interesting.
I took a long circle along streets around the site to get back into town. I made sure to walk down Otway St South to Eureka Street to pass the site of Bentley's Hotel, where there was a plaque. There are other locations claiming to be the site.
I walked on down Eureka St to to Main Rd, where I turned south and made my way back to Sovereign Hill.
At Sovereign Hill, I walked around picking up on a few things I'd skipped or missed yesterday, including Chinatown and its temple. Just for laughs, I sluiced for gold in the stream. They salted it each morning, so there was a chance. I had no luck. But I did come away with a souvenir phial of gold dust in oil, a fake nugget, and suchlike souvenirs.
I finished the afternoon at the Gold Museum across the road from the entrance to Sovereign Hill, then walked back into town.
15-04-2001 — Easter SundayToday I walked up Creswick Rd to Ballarat Old Cemetery, to look up the honoured dead. They had separate Diggers and Soldiers Memorials. For the rest, some statues and memorials, including pillars snapped off short.
From the Cemetery I headed east along MacArthur and Napier Sts to climb Black Hill. From the top there were grand views over Ballarat.
Descending, I crossed the tracks and walked to Eureka again. After the Museum I continued on to Ballarat Wildlife Park, where I admired kangaroos, wallabies, tortoises, koalas, emus, echidnas, Tasmanian devils, and a sweet wedge-tailed eagle.
Eventually I passed Montrose Cottage again and on impulse, I went in. The old lady who ran it showed me how a settler's cottage worked. There were also displays showing the Rebellion, and one with “Peter Lalor's Eureka Sword”, which appeared to be a single-edge straight sword with a simple brass handle. No idea if it really had any association with Lalor.
16-04-2001 — Easter MondayI checked out of my hotel room and dropped my pack at the station, then did a last round of central Ballarat until my train was due.
