In Bendigo, in bed, I lay researching my journey to Ballarat the next day. I was spending a few days in Victoria, and wanted to bone up on the sights. Outside, the Sunday night streets were a graveyard. I heard a dog bark from the bushes in the park across the road. I turned a page of the brochure "My Ballarat", which invited me to discover it "through the eyes and hearts of the people who know it best". They queued up to eulogise. "Dramatic, a living history," they said. "Exceptional statuary, loads of fun, a perfect getaway." On they droned. By page 25 I was asleep.
All day I had walked the wide, neat streets, discovering pleasure in the fountains. I'd talked to the statue of Queen Victoria, vaunted as "Queen of Earthly Queens", grim as usual, holding a pigeon in her hand instead of the usual orb. I sauntered the paths that wove between trees; there were cloudbursts of bird-song overhead. I sat on a bench, a stranger, contented in this small, secluded park that fronted Pall Mall. People strolled past in twos and threes or sat in the sun sipping cold drinks at wayside cafes. My gaze gulped the spire of the Sacred Heart Church, the grand Post Office, the Black Swan Hotel, where gas was generated from mutton fat in 1855. Time dissolved.
If you could blow a hole through the town you would see a honeycomb of dark burrows: The Deborah Gold Mine, which dips and twists through 17 levels, bottoming out 2,000 feet beneath the streets. The glint of quartz and lure of gold kept the miners digging, a preoccupation that gave the name "digger" to all Australians. A zig-zag of ladders dropping deeper carried the men like human earthworms into the abyss. I took the plunge.
At 11 a.m. I climbed into a boiler suit, donned a helmet, switched on my torch and stepped into the cage to descend with Jim Evans, a local guide, as well as a couple from Derbyshire and a backpacking woman called Lizzie from somewhere in Queensland. "Stretch", the lankiest miner in Australia, encouraged us to "hold on tight". For an hour and a half we stooped through tunnels, slithered down ladders and slid on the scumble of stones and grit that littered the floor. Stretch gave us a shot at the tungsten power drill; we jerked and bucked, sucking on our masks as a small tornado of killer dust spewed into the shaft.
Gold fever hit Bendigo in 1851, but the Central Deborah mine didn't open till 90 years later, only to close commercially in 1954 after yielding a ton of quality gold. Miners died mostly in their mid-forties, with shredded lungs. Sons followed fathers to the grave.
Jim brought us aloft. We had only been down to level three, 270 feet below ground. But the place tasted real, and Jim sang a mining song in the shaft as we rose through the darkness. Once the men were aloft, Pop, "the Picker" would search their togs. Wasting his time, according to Jim. "As my grandfather said," he grinned, "you haven't much of a bum if it can't take an ounce!"
The rest of the day rolled by in a haze of pleasant diversions. I rode the Cafe Tram at
lunch time, enjoying great food, air-conditioned comfort and the ambience of a genuine 1952-period tramcar. The town slipped past, the food packed flavour. The gentle ride, plus two sumptuous courses cost less than £10. I kicked my heels all afternoon, enjoying modern Australian painting in Penfold's Gallery on View Street and chewing the fat with Kevin Colvin, its friendly proprietor and Bendigo buff.
He advised me to head up the street to see the Dame Edna Frocks exhibition at the town's municipal gallery. This was the finest small town art space I've ever seen. And the frocks were outrageous. Not enough people were there to ogle appreciation and grin 'til their lips reached the lobes of their ears. My eyes resembling liquorice allsorts, I hit the streets and went for an ice-cream.
Next morning I took the road south to Ballarat. Eucalyptus trees hung like wraiths across the landscape wherever I looked. I felt apprehensive about leaving the real world of Bendigo behind to view the Gold Rush's answer to Disneyland. Sovereign Hill, Ballarat's jewel in the crown, is a representation of what the town looked like in the hard old days of the Gold Rush, which came in a frenzy of speculation back in 1851.
I wandered through the Red Hill Gully Diggings south of Ballarat's modern centre. Tourists were squatting by the creek bed, panning for gold, getting roughage beneath their fingernails, dust in their hair. Children and old-timers, all in a stupor of concentration. Looking up, you'd believe you were in a time-warp. Above the gully stands the main street, circa 1856. Locals in period dress kicked dust along the pavements; a stagecoach scuttled around the encampment.
Attention to detail was the secret. Every shop had you fooled, from the apothecary to the print shop, from the lure of the Hope Bakery to the scent of Spencer's Confectioner's. Outside, a squad of British troopers marched past. A bugle blew. A squabble was re-enacted.
All the period-posing staff were clued-up and friendly, steeped in their history, and talked with loquacious zeal about the recent referendum on the monarchy, the battle of the Eureka Stockade in 1854, or the rising prices of haberdashery and lace.
Ballarat's people were keen to please. I began to regret the fact that I would miss the re-enactment of the rebellion at Eureka when the miners fought the overlords, and won. Called "The Blood on the Southern Cross", this nightly son-etlumiere battle came recommended by the couple from Co Armagh I had met at the Wildlife Park that morning, where they bring the Australian bush to the edge of town. Koalas, wombats, freshwater crocodiles, Tassie devils, goannas, emu and kangaroo. You could stare, take pics, and sometimes touch.
That night I drove around town with Dianne, a Ballarat local, to admire streets lined with sites: preserved Victorian frontages, sombre statues of local worthies in stony array - including Queen Victoria, grumpily grand - just as billed in "My Ballarat". We ate at Dyer's where, in my greed, I almost choked on the fattest steak I have ever seen. Dianne held her breath. If I died they could stage the re-enactment of it every night.
By 10.30 p.m. the town was dead. A bunch of youths patrolled the backstreets making a din. Floodlight bathed the civic buildings. Tomorrow was coming at a lick and I would have to pack and leave. I lay in bed reading "My Ballarat". By page 25 I was still awake. Something had changed. I would have to stay, or return, or stowaway under the bed.
Getting there
Qantas offers up to three flights a day from London to Australia. For further information and latest fares phone 0044 345 747767. For a copy of the Australia Traveller's Guide phone 0044 906 8633235, or visit the Australian Tourist Commission website at www.australia.com.