Friday, December 03, 2004
Day 2 in Ballarat @ 9:07 PM
Reached melbourne airport at 9am. everyone like juz taken 10 sleeping pills liddat. groggily got outside the airport. Saw Wayne, our coach captain, and our coach. Let's say dat first impression DOES NOT always count. Wayne struck me as a very solemn, grumpy ole driver and his coach was an old dunno wat bus. but once he started toking, he was very easy going and friendly. veh corny. oh yah. his fav phrase "No worries mate!" haha. Gd ole Wayne. travelled 200km to Ballarat, a town in Victoria, where mining for gold was very popular in the 19th Century, so much so even ppl from China came down, explaining lotsa Chinese living in Victoria. Went to Golden Crown rest for lunch. ya noe how it feels to have extra salty chicken, fish that tastes like rubber and glasses wif flies inside them? OMG, dat's how it was. IT SUCKED. at that pt, all of us fervently wished that other meals would not be liddat. luckily it wasnt. anyway, we went up to Sovereign Hill, the heart of Ballarat and activities of gold mining in the 19th C. Now its a tourist attraction la. Went for a gold mining tour to experience the life in the olden days. Even tried mining for gold. Geoff and i picked a lot of gold! in small little negligable specks... the souvenir shop had personal messages crafted into coins for $15, so i bought 1 for my grandma for her bdae. haha. We then went to a supermart to buy anything we wanted lor. Geoff and i bought a drink each. $2 for lemonade. The groceries in Aussie are damn ex. That night, we slept at bunks of 8 at wat used to be a Military Barrack when the gold miners went on civilian war with the English police. Bunked wif geoff and all the 5 sec 1s. that nite, we had a veh sumptious dinner! the beef was really delicious, topped wif baked potatoes and suitable garnish. We then went for a show called "Blood of the Southern Cross", which was a live sight and sound show using the whole of Sovereign Hill to relive the civilian war in the 19th C. I finally noe why Fort Siloso nearly had to be closed down... can u compare a small little exhibition centre compared to this great amusement park? I'm not toking abt the size here, but the innovation of Sovereign Hill in educating the public on its history! After that 1hr show (which was complimentary, thanx to Winnie persuading her company to throw it in) using trams to transport us around Sovereign Hill for different scenes of the war, i learnt a lot about the war! Singapore really cant sha ji qu luan, or it can NEVER compete with Australia in this aspect. I conked out quite easily that nite, other den Yixuan going into a hysterical laughter every once in a while for dunno wat reason... haha.
he left a mark
