February 9 – Gold Rush Country

Another great day for a drive so we headed northwest into Gold Rush Country to see some of the old gold rush towns.  Australia had a major gold rush in the section of the country in the mid‑1800’s and some of the towns definitely looked like they were founded on money.

First stop was Ballarat.  Since we hadn’t had breakfast our first order of business was lunch.  We spied a pancake place (in an 1850’s building) and decided pancakes make a good lunch.  Since pancakes in Australia are almost always topped with a scoop of ice cream Mary opted for the “Alice in Wonderland”…two pancakes with ice cream, chocolate syrup and sprinkles.    

As a Gold Rush town most of the buildings in downtown dated from the mid-1800's.  These beautiful, old heritage buildings, many with iron lace balconies, were well preserved.

Turns out the early forefathers decided that they needed an art gallery.  We toured the gallery and it was extremely interesting with a great variety of art.  Much of the work was purchased in the 1800’s with the focus on Australian artists.

There was a good amount of aboriginal art...

as well as lot of contemporary art as well.

One exhibit really peeked our interest.  The artist, Geoff Bonney, created a number of pieces based on a Pangram.  A Pangram is a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet (think "The quick brown fox ..."), if possible each letter is only used once .  He did a series of six words that, all together used all 26 letters of the alphabet only once (Q was stand alone).  The names of the pieces were pretty funny and were a clue to the word.  

The piece named Bang was for the word Whiz...as in Whiz Bang.

Vessels was the word Jugs.

On the way back to the car we passed a Tupperware shop.  What a surprise.

We then drove to Castlemaine where we walked the town to see more of the heritage buildings.  

The Old Market had an art exhibition going on, with some very interesting art.

By the time we got to Bendigo it was getting late.  We toured the area with some heritage buildings, then had dinner. 

A sign for the Births and Deaths registration office - was down the alley but no longer there.

On the way out of town we stopped to take a few photos of Sacred Heart Cathedral.  

Then it was home by the end of the day. Yes, home.  These days home is where our suitcases are.