When we arrived at Sovereign hill we decided to look at all the shops on the main street. Next I stuck my head inside the candle makers and got to see them “growing” candles by dipping them in melted wax.  After that I continued to walk around and eventually stumbled across the gold panning area and meandered around the Chinese camp.  I learnt a lot about Chinese culture on the gold fields.

Then we regrouped at the gold pour to see a $150,000 gold ingot being poured.  After that we next door to see the confectionary demonstration to see some sweets being made.  Today the confectioner was making Acid drops.  He poured out the melted sugar onto a tray and mixed in some sulphuric acid – just kidding, it was really citric acid.  Then he divided the mixture into ten big blobs and passed them through a set of rollers that moulded them into the right shape and let them harden.  They looked like little marbles joined together by a thin sheet of crystallised sugar.  Once they cooled he picked up the sheets of hardened lollies and banged them hard in a sieve to separate all the little balls.  After that he brought some around to the counter so we could have a taste.  They tasted very sour although I quite enjoyed them.

After that I had a look at the wheel making demonstration.  I got to see how wooden coach wheels are made.  They were surprisingly quick to make with the right machinery.  Though I later found out that the wheel hubs took between five to thirty YEARS to dry out properly!    After that we went down to the gold panning creek.  We spent roughly 2-3 hours there panning for gold at the creek.  They sprinkle 3 gm of gold flakes in the creek each day and in the Christmas school holidays they put in a 3 gm nugget each week.  I found about 10 flakes but nothing bigger than a grain of sand.

Then we went over to the Gold Museum.  It had lots of real gold and even more fake gold.  There was an interesting section on bikes (I had no idea bikes were related to gold especially since they were not gold bikes!  And gold bikes would be absolutely pointless as they would be too heavy to ride).  I enjoyed watching a movie about how gold forms, but before I could see the end of it we had to go home.

See you late alligator, Sam.