12 January 2012 - East Beach Reserve, Lake Bolac, Victoria

It must have been nearly 10 o’clock when we drove over the hill and back down into Avoca this morning. With a distant backdrop of the Pyrenees, we agreed we had been rather harsh in dissing it as we had yesterday. As we turned south and drove through the out skirts, we could see there was a certain appeal for those who had decided to make Avoca their home.

The road continued through the gentle golden grasslands, with lovely shady gum trees for the many sheep, always browner than their cousins in New Zealand. The surface of the road was consistent; lumpy, bumpy and all we have come to consider typical of Victorian roads. Hopefully we will be pleasantly surprised as we travel further east. We passed through the remnants of tiny settlements; Amphitheatre, named for the natural land feature before it moved to the more practical rise away from the river, and Elmhurst, at the foot of Ben Nevis, which rises 830 metres above sea level. As we neared the old gold mining town of Ararat, the land became hilly, but then only in relation to the plains we had passed through.

Ararat has a population of about 8,000, quite a step back from the 30,000 or so who were here for a while in 1857, immediately after the discovery of gold by Chinese trudging through on their way to Bendigo. These were the same Chinese who arrived in Robe, across the border in South Australia, in an effort to avoid the poll tax. Apparently in the first three weeks of mining, ninety three kilograms of gold was shipped out,  followed by a further three tonnes over just twelve weeks. Is it any wonder that the masses arrived to make their fortune!

We used the dump station and topped up with water before finding a level spot to lunch and contemplate our route beyond this vibrant town, then found another level park nearer the centre from which we set out to explore.

Ararat Town Hall

Our first stop was the Art Gallery, a modest affair with an excellent exhibition of Australian landscapes by Eugene von Guerard. This Austrian born painter was born in 1811 and came to Australia in 1852 to try his luck in the goldfields. He set up camp in the Ballarat goldfields for twelve months and soon found his artist efforts earned him more than any digging would. He spent a few decades travelling about the four colonies in the antipodes (South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales) producing prolifically, before returning to Europe where he eventually expired in 1901. He is apparently sometimes referred to as the “father of Australian landscape painting”; I have to admit to not having heard of him before, although I am sure I have seen some of his work. The current exhibition includes several dozen framed lithographs, a book of 24 selected lithographs and several oils, all borrowed except for the book which normally can only exhibit one page at a time. Obviously my enthusiasm suggests correctly that I was impressed.

We walked up and down the main street, and would have made a necessary purchase from The Reject Shop had it been open. Notices on the window and a conversation with a local shopper explained that the shop was temporarily closed; the roof had fallen in. We squinted through the gaps in the window covers and could indeed see that it had, and could only be pleased to learn that no one had been in the shop when it had occurred. In the meantime, much of the stock in the shop is exposed to the elements and the sunshine, when it finally deems to re-shine.

We drove to the Gum Sam Chinese Heritage Centre and spent a few hours pouring through the stories and artefacts exhibited there. This museum is housed in a purpose built Chinese temple-like structure, with a roof of tiles donated by Ararat’s sister city in China, Taishan, and constructed by four tilers who came especially to carry out the work. Needless to say, that they, earning Australian wages for the time it took, returned to their homeland with their own “gold; enough to start their own businesses.

Donated roof tiles

While all of the Chinese who founded Ararat over one hundred and fifty years ago, and those that followed , are now all gone from here, some on to the New Zealand gold rushes, some back to China and the rest to other places in Australia to succeed in business apart from gold mining, Ararat has in more recent years made a concentrated effort to honour them. In schools here in Ararat today Mandarin is taught at all levels, teachers are exchanged with those in Taishan, and the construction of Gum Sam was paid mainly by local fundraising, including three years of wage deductions from the willing public, and the assistance of wealthy business people in Melbourne. With modest entry fees, even with voluntary staff, it is unlikely that this museum will provide a return on investment, but it does serve to educate and inform today’s generations of the contribution of these “Celestials”, the title these “foreign devils” were known by.

We headed off south from Ararat after topping up the diesel tanks. The Grampians rose majestically from the golden plains in the west as we drove south to Lake Bolac. We detoured east of the settlement and the two hundred souls who apparently live here, to this reserve on the lake side. It is evident by the amount of rubbish about that there were many others here over Christmas and New Year, but tonight we are alone. It is another cold night, but the wind is not a problem. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little warmer and I can start wearing summer clothes again.