Mar 29, Ballarat

Good Friday. At 9am, downtown Ballarat was a ghost town. Only the info center, tourist attractions and coffee shops were open. We walked around looking at the historic buildings. Ballarat is the largest inland city in Victoria and it was built on gold. There were many beautiful old buildings.
We went into the Royal Craig Hotel and met the owner. Many famous people stayed here, Mark Twain, Prince Alfred, Prince Edward and Capt. James Waddell. The last was the skipper of the CSS Shenandoah, a Confederate sailing ship that was bought by the Confederacy in England and used to attack US whaling ships. It was the only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the earth. We had never heard of this part of the Civil War and were fascinated by what he had to tell us.
We continued our tour and went into Christ Church Anglican Cathedral. We met Constantine, a priest there and he invited us to join him for coffee later. After seeing more of Ballarat we met him and went to an outdoor cafe. He was a Catholic priest from Nigeria who had recently become an Anglican priest and was assigned to Ballarat. It was a fascinating conversation. He left the Catholic Church because of its ruling on women priests, married priests and the very conservative stances on contraception. He hopes to open a school for the poor in Nigeria.
Spent the afternoon resting in preparation for a busy night.
First, to the observatory. We took a tour of the buildings and telescopes they have. Then we watched three 3D movies - one on the big things in astronomy, another on the small things and the last about Mars exploration.
From there we went to Sovereign Hill, a recreation of Ballarat in the 1850's, during the gold rush and the Eureka uprising. At night they put on a light and sound show. It covers the uprising and the events that led up to it.
Gold miners flooded Ballarat and the government needed money for policemen to keep order. They raised it by requiring miners to buy licenses for dig. It was a monthly cost, even if they found no gold. To enforce the license, police made raids on the gold fields hunting for those without licenses. There were other clashes between the miners and the government and tensions were high. When the police made more frequent raids, 10,000 miners sent demands to the government for a repeal of the licenses and the right to vote and be represented. The miners built a stockade to protect their homes and raised the "Southern Cross" flag over, but the police and army reinforcements attacked. 28 miners and 2 policemen were killed and the flag taken down. Public outrage finally forced the government to back down. This was considered the beginning of Australian Democracy.
The show involved a movie in a theater, then we walked into the 'gold field' for another part of the story, rode a train to an outdoor stage for more of the story. The last scene was in the Main Street with an actor explaining what the uprising meant to Australia. It was quite a production and very well done. But it lasted from 9:45 to 11:00. We were really tired and just camped in the parking lot.
Pictures - Bandstand in Ballarat dedicated to the members of the band aboard the Titanic (outline of the Titanic on the weathervane), jeanne, Constantine & Samson, Eureka "Southern Cross" flag