Year 5 Camp - Bendigo & Ballarat

The Year 5’s had an action packed three days in Ballarat starting at the Eureka Centre. Students leant about the events leading up to the Eureka Stockade, identified historical objects and saw the actual Eureka Stockade flag!

After this we travelled to Sovereign Hill and began our tour of the Red Hill Mine. This tour explained to us about what life was like for a miner named William Tragenza.  We also saw a replica of the Welcome Nugget.  We went back to our accommodation and prepared for dinner and the Aura Light Show.  Aura was spectacular!  It started with a 3D movie explaining how gold was formed, followed by a story of the creation of Ballarat told by the traditional owners of the land. The final part of the tour outlined what life what like on the diggings, where people travelled from and also gave further information about the Eureka Stockade as well as the Chinese miners.

Day 2 and 3 focused on costume school.  We were lucky enough to dress as children from the 1850’s and be immersed in what school would have been like back then.  We wrote on a slate and also with a pen and ink (this was tricky!). The girls learnt to sew and the boys tied knots using rope.  It was interesting to find out that the boys and girls weren’t allowed to play together at break times and even had different games from one another.  Ma’am took us on tours of Sovereign Hill and when we walked we had to be in two straight silent lines otherwise we would be reprimanded.  She took us to the diggings and let us go gold panning.  Some of us struck it rich… well, we found a few flakes!

A highlight was the gold pour where we saw melted gold being poured into a mold and turned into a solid gold bar. When the mining engineer tapped the hot gold bar with his chisel, sparks flew out of it! We were also lucky enough on the second night to attend the Winter Wonderlights where colourful lights are projected onto the buildings to Christmas themed music and the air was filled with bubble snow.

We certainly learnt a lot in three days and are now well prepared with knowledge for our History unit this term!