Australia, Victoria - Ball-a-rat?

What a name to a city... Ballarat... Ball-a-rat... generally the name is believed to be derived from local aboriginal language meaning "resting place". Yea I know it sounds like a land of graveyards! but it's basically Victoria's largest inland city and was the site of the Victorian Gold Rush in the 1850's and 1860's.

Ballarat has a an old feel to it, driving down the roads and looking at the architectures. I pretty much regretted that we didn't had enough time to really explore the whole city of Ballarat as we were rushing back to catch dinner and our flight back to Malaysia.

Since it was a short trip we decided to go to Sovereign Hill, which is an award winning open air museum that depicts the lifestyle of the locals in the Gold Rush days. It's pretty amazing that they sort of recreated a whole town, complete with actual mining shafts that were used during those days!.

As you walk past the entrance the gold diggings was the centrepoint of the park. Complete with mining tools which you can use to hunt for your own gold!...

The Gold Diggings, complete with a "lost" prospector

There were 2 mines which have guided tours. One called Red Hill and the other was The Sovereign Quarts Mine. The Red Hill is where you can locate the famous Welcome Nugget, the second largest gold nugget ever found in Australia, weighing at a whopping 69kg and consists of 99% pure gold. At today's market price it would be about RM7.59 million!. The sovereign Quarts Mine is a paid tour where they would bring you through an actual gold mine, with a tour guide to explain every details about life in the shaft during those times...

The Welcome Nugget...

The underground mining shaft...

Walking around the town was an interesting and "lively" experience. It's set in the 1850's era, complete with it's replica buildings, farm houses, schools, shops, bakery, tailor and comes complete with costumed staff willing to take pics and talk to you!

Scenes around Sovereign Hill...

We completed our tour with the "gold pour" Demonstration. Where they actually showed how gold was melted in those days and poured into a 3kg bullion bar, which is worth more than Rm30,000 in today's prices!.

Thinking how to run away with the gold bar!...

The next posting would be one of the highlights of the trip... PENGUINS!... =)

Australia, Victoria - Melbourne City

I've been receiving comments that I write too much about my travels. Less talking. More Pics. OK so here goes!... :P

I like Melbourne. It's a really nice place and being there make you understand why it's constantly rated top three as the "World's Most Livable City" by The Economist since 2002. Practically you can find everything here... arts, commerce, education, sports, tourism and especially GOOD FOOD. It's such a blend of different cultures that you can get practically any type of food over here.

Although the city skyline is dominated by skyscrapers, walking through the city would give you a glimpse of Melbourne's past such as The Queen Victoria Market, St. Paul's and St. Patrick's Cathedrals, Old Melbourne Gaol, The Parliament House and various other notable building and parks around that gives it such a diverse character to this city.

Melbourne: Blending the Old and the New

Although the Yarra River is one of the main theme of the city, one of the pressing issues that the city face is water shortage due to drought and low rainfall. The irony of it is we were caught in the rain a couple of times when we were there.... :p. There's a water restriction that applies to every household, where you'll be fined for overusing the household quota!. So when we take a bath there's a timer that we have to turn, it sorts of limits your water usage to 3 minutes max!

Mebourne's sky scrapers...

Melbourne is also home to the World's Largest Tram network. The best part is there's one tram that goes around Melbourne City dedicated for tourist and it's free.Michelle and I used it extensively as you can drop on/off and different points in the city up to 6pm. We also used the train to get to and fro from my sister's place in Huntingsdale. It's pretty cheap on weekends, you can hop on and off for the whole day for only AUD6.80 all over zone 1. As Melly has only 2 zones, you can imagine zone 1 covers quite alot of areas accept the outskirts!.

The commercial tram (above) and the maroon city tram dedicated for tourists!

Art and fun in Melbourne

Shopping around Melly: Harbourtown and Queen Victoria

Finally the gem of all pictures that I took over in Melbourne. I'm surprised and how the pics turn out as ALL the previous pics were either blueish or dull. My 5 year old camera is really getting very moody (or really bad photo skills!).... basically this is taken at the Melbourne Docklands...

Melbourne Docklands...

Till the next installment!...

How to get the gf angry in a second?

Tell her u would rather play football then going for ur own birthday dinner with her... :P

Australia, Victoria - Mornington Peninsula/Point Nepean

The Mornington Peninsula is located to the southeast of Melbourne and consists mainly of green hinterlands and ocean beaches. There's also wineries and strawberry parks around. As we wanted to make it a short trip we decided to visit Point Napean and just stop by at whatever coastal towns we find interesting.


After dropping of my sister and niece to their classes, we took a pleasant drive across the mornington peninsula, passing by picturesque harbours and colourful wineries. I didn't manage to take pics as the side roads were marked "for emergency use only"... was driving my brother in law's car... dun wanna get him into trouble just because of some "jakun" tourist... :P. Anyway image below attributed to stickypix at flickr.

Winery along Mornington Peninsula

Anyway Point Nepean is part of the Port Philips Head National Park and it was only open to the public in 1988 as it's a military site previously. It is also infamous as it's the location where the Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt disappeared in 1969, presumed drowned. It's pretty much also a historical site as many fortifications and buildings were built since the 1800's.

Point Nepean is about from 5km from Portsea, however vehicles are not allowed to drive and it's only accessible via walking, cycling OR you can take their tractor! Michelle and I decided to take the tractor as we're not really keen on walking the 5km! and it was a wise decision... as it started pouring when we reach there.

The only vehicle allowed access to Point Nepean.

We took a walk around Fort Nepean, taking in the sights until it started pouring. We took shelter in one of the underground tunnels as we had to wait for the tractor to arrive back to pick us up!.

Sights around Point Nepean

As the weather wasn't too good for sight-seeing we decided to head back and drop by Sorrento for lunch. We stumbled upon this supposedly "world-famous" vanilla slice shop and had our lunch there. The food there was quite nice with michelle having the ....chiletto (can't remember the first name to it) and I took the standard fish and chips. The vanilla slice was a real treat too.

Vanilla slice at Just Fine Foods in Sorrento

On the way back we spotted a pier at Rye and decided to walk along there. The waters were absolutely clear.

Rye Pier

All rights that's all for now... till the next installment of the Melbourne trip series!... Cheers...