A fun history lesson!

A couple of weeks ago we traveled south to the town of Ballarat which is one of the most famous gold towns in Australian history. In 1854 there was an uprising of the miners or “diggers” as they were called then. That, by the way, is also what the Australian enlisted soldiers are called. U.S. soldiers are called “Joes” and UK soldiers are called “Toms”. There's your history lesson for the day.

The first night we saw a narration and light show that explained the reasons behind the uprising. Basically the miners were required to purchase licenses to pan for gold and the gold commissioner and police and British troops were unfairly taking advantage of the miners. The miners took up arms to defend their rights not unlike the colonist in the US.

They had sites set up as they were back in the 1800's and all the employees were in period clothing. There were many horses which the girls enjoyed immensely and the only thing more popular than the horses was the various cats that lived around the camp. The girls got to dress up as junior redcoats and they marched and searched a tent for hidden bags of gold. We all panned for gold, but Kim was the only one patient enough to find actual flakes of gold.



We celebrated a late Christmas on this trip too as we stopped by the consulate in Melbourne and picked up our mail that had been delayed due to the holidays. We only receive and send mail once a week and we took advantage of this time to mail out Christmas boxes as well.