We had a couple of very heavy showers overnight and we assume the rain was associated with a cold front that passed through the state. We understand that heavy snow has fallen on the Victorian high country and the cold air has resulted in rain hitting the ground in the form of very small hail stones rather than snow. We have no idea if we had hail or not.
Today we planned to head into Ballarat and photograph some of the magnificent buildings.
First stop was at the Beechworth Bakery where we enjoyed morning tea. Noting that Ballarat has dealerships for three vehicles that we have been looking at, and, as these dealerships are close together, we decided to have another look at each vehicle on our shortlist.
First stop would be to look at a Subaru Forrester, the second stop for the Renault Koleos and finally another look at the Mazda CX5. We looked at the Forrester and then got no further than the Renault. What happened over the next couple of hours is another story but we will be making another trip back to Ballarat in the not too distant future to finalise the purchase of a Renault (it had been on the top of our list and sometimes some offer are too good to refuse).
We left the dealership just before 4:00pm (we had been there for several hours) and headed back towards our camp. Having not had lunch, we purchased an early tea as we had booked tickets to attend the sound and light show at Sovereign Hill.
We arrived at Sovereign Hill at 7:45pm and joined a large number of people to experience “Blood on the Southern Cross”.
The Sovereign Hill web site says, ‘Blood on the Southern Cross’ is an explosive multi-million dollar sound-and-light show like nothing you’ve ever seen before!
The story of the Eureka Rebellion, a dramatic battle between gold miners and Government forces at Ballarat on 3 December, 1854, is retold nightly by ‘Blood on the Southern Cross’, Sovereign Hill’s acclaimed sound-and-light spectacular.
Set under the night skies at Sovereign Hill, ‘Blood on the Southern Cross’ involves no actors – just voices, dazzling sound-and-light effects and a stunning open-air set. Visitors travel across the site on a comfortable transporter and view much of the action from the re-created Free Trade Hotel on the Eureka Diggings.”
The above is a good description of the show. Although cold, we were lucky not to have any rain and two of the four parts to the show are conducted in the outdoors. We both have the opinion that the show is definitely worth the admission price.
We were back in our campsite just after 10:00pm and looking forward to jumping into bed. It was cold!