Sovereign Hill, Ballarat, Australia

At a distance of 112 kilometres from Melbourne is the charming town of Ballarat, with wide streets and buildings that look straight out of a 1850’s postcard!

One of the main attractions in Ballarat is Sovereign Hill, which is an open air museum situated on an old Gold mining area. We planned to spend a day of our life pretending to be gold miners.
We started early and reached Southern Cross railway station, Melbourne at 6:30AM and collected tickets for the train to Ballarat. The first train to Ballarat was at 7:05AM. There are trains running between Melbourne and Ballarat every hour. We grabbed a cup of tea from the coffee shop near the ticket counter and sipped away as we waited for the train.

At 7:05 AM we boarded the train and reached Ballarat at 8:40 AM.  We had sandwiches and tea at the café in the station. The gold museum, which is just outside sovereign hill, opens only at 9:30 and sovereign hill opens by 10:00 so we had plenty of time to get refreshed. At 9:15 we hailed a taxi from the taxi stand right outside the railway station to Sovereign hill. We reached sovereign hill by 9:30 AM. Since Sovereign hill opens only at 10 AM, we planned to visit the Gold museum.

You can get the tickets to the museum as well as sovereign hill from the museum itself. While purchasing the tickets to sovereign hill they will give you a leaflet which has a map of the place and also the activities planned for the day. The leaflet is very useful to plan your day so that u don’t miss out on any of the events :)

The museum has an impressive collection of gold nuggets and artifacts used by the early miners. The gold museum shop sells a wide range of souvenirs including small gold nuggets. The Gold museum is on a small hill , so the view from outside the museum is also beautiful.

We were able to finished touring the museum by 10:15AM after which we went to Sovereign hill. Your ticket cost will cover everything except the horse carriage ride around the place and the gold mine tours.

Once we stepped into sovereign hill we could feel time rewinding. Everything around looked and felt like the 1850’s, including the people who worked there. Their clothes, the way they spoke we felt as though everything was trapped in time.

Horse Carriage carrying water for miners

Street Performers

Inside the mine

Gold smelting

Another street performer

The red soldiers

The old Ballarat city, as depicted in Sovereign Hill

 If you are interested in knowing the entire cycle of Gold extraction and how miners and their families lived, plan to spend an entire day at sovereign hill. If you are a relaxed traveller, you could also plan to stay at Sovereign hill and enjoy the night theatre performances and the evening sound and light shows.

Take some time to plan you activities in sovereign hill depending on the time you have in your hands.  Spend time trying your luck in getting some Gold nuggets at the area for gold panning and take a guided tour of the Gold mines. Also don’t miss the gold smelting session. Children can also try candle dipping, and dip candles in a variety of colours and patterns  or enjoy the candy making sessions. Sovereign hill has enough to amuse every one.  You can also enjoy delicious meals or grab small bites at one of the many bakeries, restaurants, cafes and dining rooms.  

Sovereign hill is a nice place to visit. We had planned to spend half of our day at sovereign hill and the other half at the Ballarat wildlife park, but we liked the place so much, that we ended up spending our entire day there. With much reluctance we left sovereign hill and took a taxi back to the Ballarat railway station at 5:30 to catch our train back to Melbourne. Be prepared to wait for taxis as there would be none outside. Alternatively you can try catching a bus back the railway station.

Souvenirs we bought from the museum: a miner perched on quartz and 24 carat  gold leaves in oil.