Rich discovered he’d left his thermals at home so we borrowed Katie’s car and did a quick drive to Anaconda to buy Rich another one. We arrived back to the RV’s to find he’d left his favourite cap behind in the fitting room. Bummer! He called them and it was found. They’ll hang on to it until he can pick it up.

We all packed our lunch and with our backpacks on headed off on foot to visit Sovereign Hill. As I said earlier Sovereign Hill is just around the corner from the NRMA Park. There’s even a back gate from the park to shorten the walk.

It is very easy to spend the day at Sovereign Hill and we managed to fit in quite a lot. Throughout the day there are various demonstrations with people dressed in period costume to add a little bit of theatre to the demonstrations.

We watched a Musket firing demonstration by a man dressed as an 1850’s mounted policeman.

We also watched a Blacksmith demonstration where the blacksmith made a metal shepherds crook.

Katie and the children tried Gold panning (didn’t find anything)

We explored the various shops full of goods for sale such as lollies. We checked out the houses full of interesting furniture and household goods. Ben pointed to a guzunder and said ‘Ooh it’s full of wee”

We ate our packed lunch near the children’s playground while watching a group of badly behaved school children.

Later we watched a fascinating Gold pouring where we were shown how gold is super heated in a crucible and then poured carefully into a mould to take out the impurities. The resulting ingot weighed 3kg and is worth around $60,000.

Ben was dying to go on the Underground Mine tour so once the gold pouring finished we had to move very quickly to the mine for book in offer the next tour which started in 10 minutes. It was a fun tour going underground on a tram then walking through the mine before riding the tram back to the surface. It was so dark going down and back up on the tram that you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face.

By the time we’d done the mine tour we were all ready to head for home. It had been a long day. We’d mostly been on our feet all day so, after a quick stop in the gift shop on the way out, 6 tired people walked slowly back to our caravan park.

Katie and I did a little washing, the kids played on the jumping pillow, Ben found the games room, Pa and I went for a walk around the park and Katie cooked our dinner. It started raining about 6 and looked like it was going to settle in. Riley and Maddie played games while Pa surfed the net.

The rain really settled in so everyone called it an early night and headed to their bed to read or play games. We moved the boys swags so they were under the motorhome awning as it’s bigger than the one on the van.