Year 5 Spotlight

Excursion to Sovereign Hill

On Wednesday 7th May the Year 5 students visited Sovereign Hill in Ballarat. We experienced four seasons in one day, but we were prepared for everything Ballarat could throw at us… rain, wind, mud and sunshine!

Our excursion to this ‘living museum’ enabled our students to immerse themselves in life on the goldfields, including panning for gold, visiting the Red Hill mine, and shopping in the main street – the lolly store, and raspberry drops in particular, seemed to be a favourite!

This experience will assist us in developing our understanding of the Victorian Gold Rush to support our learning in both our history unit and our writing focus on historical fiction.

These are some quotes from the students about our day at Sovereign Hill:

‘It was very different to how we live now. Instead of cars they had horse carriages and the roads were dusty and uneven.’ ~ Penny D, 5B
‘I liked the education centre where we learnt about immigrants and the different jobs that they did back then, miners, painters and actresses.’ ~ Bea F, 5B
‘I enjoyed visiting the education centre, where we learnt that the immigrants who travelled to Victoria were from countries like Germany, the UK, China and America’. ~ Evie P, 5B
‘I liked going to the lolly shop and the mines. The mines had holograms of the gold found and showed how big it was.’ ~ Daniel R, 5B
‘It was really fun, I liked the mines and gold panning most.’ ~ Levi T, 5B
‘Going underground in the Red Hill Mine was a little claustrophobic and dark, so I can only imagine how bad it would have been for the miners back then. ~ Dash G, 5A
‘I really enjoyed the excursion. It was great to feel like we went back in time. My favourite part was the underground mine tour. ~ Angus B, 5A
My group went to the candle and soap shop, it smelled amazing and there was a lady making candles, she showed us how to dip them and make them a different colour. It was so fun and I definitely want to go there again! ~ Saskia N, 5C
It was very wet and muddy and yuck! But I got to hold a gold nugget – it was really little but it was worth $530. ~ Bethany L, 5C
I really liked the toffee apples, they were sweet and the apple went really well with the toffee. ~ Noah D, 5C
All of it was super fun, but one of my highlights was going bowling with my group. Because it was so old we had to set up the pins by ourselves and roll down the balls for the next person. ~ Zoe U, 5C
A goose chased me. Seeing people dressed up in costumes was fun! ~ Willow G, 5C
A 17 foot horse and carriage nearly bulldozed me! ~ Leo S, 5C
When we went to pan for gold it was very fun because we found out new methods for panning and we were rewarded by finding gold. ~ Emily M, 5C
I went to the candle shop and there were so many candles. The shop smelled amazing and there was a whole other back part for making and dipping candles. I bought a rainbow dipped wish candle and it was only 50 cents! ~ Elizabeth K, 5C
I went to the chemist and I saw a jar of leeches. They used to use them to suck on people’s temples to let the bad headache spirits out when they felt sick. ~ Hannah W, 5C

~ Year 5 Teachers (Blake, Faye, Naomi & Olivia) and Students