The weather forecast for today was mixed with fine weather for the morning then rain developing later in the afternoon.
Due to the rain experienced since we arrived in Bendigo coupled with relatively bare sites in the caravan park, our hoses were covered in wet dirt. “He” invested time to clean everything with fingers crossed that our next campsite would have grass. With the unknown weather conditions in front of us couple with the ANZAC Day holiday close by, we decided to look for a caravan park in Ballarat where we could sit out the weather with power, water and sullage attached to the caravan.
We booked into a caravan park (that we had stayed in previously) close to Sovereign Hill in Ballarat. We also booked to go to the Sovereign Hill sound-and-light show that celebrates the Eureka Rebellion “Blood on the Southern Cross”.
With only about 130k’s to travel, we took our time in leaving but we were still heading south close to 9:00am. We elected not to travel on the main road to Ballarat and detoured through the towns of Castlemaine and Daylesford.
We were blessed in being able to see the wonderful colours in the trees as nature prepares for winter. The landscape was simply brilliant.
Taking our time, we were able to reduce our fuel consumption and “He” was very proud in recording consumption of around 14.5 litres per 100k’s especially when you consider the amount of climbing we had to do and the additional fuel used when slowing and the accelerating every time we passed through a town.
By 11:00am we had checked into our camp site, The Big4 Ballarat Goldfields caravan park, and it didn’t take long to connect services.
After lunch, we paid a visit to the Eureka Centre (The Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (M.A.D.E)). Concessional entry cost us $8.00 each and we were very disappointed with what we saw. The highlight of the display would probably be the original Eureka flag. We had to share the exhibition with a large number of school children. At least they are being educated with our history, something that seems to be lacking in today’s education.
With dark clouds appearing in the distance, we then drove through Ballarat and commented there are many buildings that need to be in the viewfinder of our cameras.
We passed through the “Ballarat Arch of Victory”, a monument we had not seen before.
Our visit was then interrupted with a quick visit to Ballarat Mazda where “He” wanted to take a picture of the boot of the new CX5. We also wanted to determine if the HUD display in the vehicle shows the GPS speed or the odometer speed (apparently, the latter). We also looked at the impact of adding a full size tyre (does impact a little).
With the cloud increasing in darkness, we made a quick visit to the Prisoner Of War Memorial located near the Botanical Gardens adjacent to Lake Wendouree. Photographs were taken and more pictures were taken of the bird life in Lake Wendouree.
We returned to our camp site just before the rain started.,
The BOM had issued a severe weather warning for heavy rain and possible large hail. Fortunately, we only received the heavy rain which continued through most of the night.
We ordered “delivered” pizza for tea.