The Sovereign Hill Camp Recount

by Gabriel Merl

The dusty old days were 100’s of years ago with amazing history such as the Gold Rush, the battle of the Eureka Stockade, the finding of Australia, and the awesome adventures that happened to people during that time.

The Grade 5 and 6 classes blasted to the past into the 18th century to discover what it was like back in the days of the Gold Rush. The Gold Rush was a time period that lasted quite a bit where people stampeded into Australia to find gold and fortune. We all hopped onto the bus and traveled for a straight 1 hour and a half. When we got there, we dropped our suitcases and bags off at the hotel we stayed at and we went straight to work. We were divided into 4 different groups to do different activities for the day.

The first thing we did was gold panning. The gold panning, as I might warn you, is easy if you know what you’re doing. Another thing you should know is that the gold is usually the size of sand grains, so you better check carefully before dipping your pan back in. We were tutored by a woman that you would address as “Ma’am” and she gave us good tips on how to be pro panners.

I, unfortunately, was not able to put the gold I found into the jars since that for me was the hardest part, although it was still fun to do the things they did back then. Our group started checking out tents and temples of the Chinese that worked in the gold fields long ago. We got into a cool Chinese temple that displayed projections of what it would have looked like back then. It was like watching a movie!

When it finished, we went to the shops. The shops looked as if they were from the old times, I couldn’t see anything modern looking all around. We all checked out the different shops, jewelry shops, clothing stores, gold supply shops and lolly shops!

The lolly shops were by far the best shops in the town, we bought some treats for the road ahead like toffee apples, raspberry drops, and many more! At lunch, we went to this playground to eat, we were given fruit and muffins and we played on the playground for a bit.

There was a ship as one of the equipment that was probably life size, a large slide and play area, a life size carriage and horse, and a sand pit area with grass surrounding it. We played games till about 2.

When it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon, everyone went to their cabins and got ready for dinner, we stayed in our cabins for quite a bit. Dinner came with horror, taking the girls out for dinner. We dreaded it a lot, but it was what we had to do. We had to pair up with a girl, or more if there were spares, link arms and walk into dinner. The boys had to pull the chair out for the girls, pour the water, do the cutlery, give them their meal if the boys got it first.

The boys had dreaded it, probably more than the girls. Dinner for me was fine, we ate delicious food made by a chef named Lewi. Lewi apparently worked all by himself: dishes, food, serving and telling people off when they spilled the water. I was disappointed to see lots of food wasted at dinner, most of the students, except me, didn’t even finish HALF of the food!

The day ended quickly and the next day came… Day 2: Day 2 started off badly since my cabin was a notch too high in the beds when we were supposed to be “sleeping”. We probably slept at 1am because of SOME people! We went to breakfast at 8 in the morning.

Fortunately, we were allowed to NOT have to take a girl out (phew). We went to go do some stuff, nothing important or cool except for some candle making and a tour of the mines and a gold pour that was amazing and some other stuff. Yeah, nothing important.

The Gold Pour was by FAR the best part of the day, some dude made a BLAZING hot gold bar and showed us what happened to your hand if you touch it. Not a good result.

Anyhow, I got to buy a gold jar with REAL gold for 15 bucks. The candle making was cool as well, they had this ferris wheel with strings of wax hanging on it. They made crystal looking candles with rainbow colours. Some people bought some candles themselves. I didn’t since I didn’t want to waste money.

Lunch came fast and we did the same as yesterday. We then went to go to the musket firing show. It was so sick watching the guy show us the different weapons that the soldiers would use. Dinner came, we did the same thing as before. The best part of camp came, the LIGHT SHOW. The light show sounded like a bunch of fireworks, but it ended up being BETTER, it was 3 theaters that played a virtual show, a 3D movie, and a strange commentary in a pond. There were objects flying at us, fire blazing, re-enactments and MORE. The day ended again at midnight and we slept quite well.

Day 3: The day was short as we only just wandered around the place and packed up, we were sad to leave, but we knew it was time. We went gold-panning again, going to stores, all that stuff. We hopped on the bus to return to the modern world.

THE END

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