Saturday, 23/2/08

g'day.

  Lindas cousin is visiting Oz at the moment and have arrived in Melbourne for four days on her way around the country. So after she rung us, to let us know she was here, we arranged to pick her up this morning and take her over to Ballerat, to visit Sovereign Hill and give her a day at the Gold Museum. It was cold up there, well it always is colder than Melbourne. Every time we have been there with visitors it has changed and grown much bigger, you really need 2 days too amble through the reconstruction of the streets of the old Ballerat which has been rebuilt to make the museum. There is a new section that portrays the way the hundreds of Chinese gold miners, that came too the gold fields, in the mid 19th century were housed and treated by the goverment. It seems they were not treated too well and forced to pay extra taxes for them to mine in the area but many of the Chinese families became extreemly wealthy due to the finds they made, it seems an awfull lot of them returned to China, where they helped their families, that stayed at home.

  The Welcome Stranger is the largest gold nugget ever discovered and was found on the outer edges of the Ballerat gold field. It weighed over 2,200 Oz. and at todays prices would be worth well over $ 2,000,000 American, approx. $2.2 million Australian. I should buy myself a miners licence and a metal detector and wonder around the area on a weekend. If I found one or two small nuggets i'd be very happy.

  Well all for this week.

Robert, Linda and the boys