Road Trip

Last week the Significant Other and I took a "mini break" and hit the road to Ballarat. It was somewhere that we had both wanted to see for a while due to its history and buildings and after watching The Doctor Blake mysteries on the ABC earlier this year we decided to do it for our mid year break.

I love mini breaks, only a couple of days away from home but it can really revive you and I find that it just gives me a bit of a mental health break to get on with the rest of the year. Last year we did our road trip to Bendigo and saw the Grace Kelly Style Icon exhibition so this years road trip had a couple of things in common with last year. 

I planned our trip around getting to see the Hollywood Costumes in Melbourne, and having spent a lot of time in Melbourne before we felt we could get by on a day trip, so we planned to stay in Ballarat and then catch the train into Town on the day we had tickets for the exhibition.

It's great to get out and see regional Australia and see how life fares outside of the capital cities. One little town we love to stop at for morning tea is Gunning, so if you are in the vicinity I can highly recommend the Merino Cafe which also has the best caramel slice I have ever tasted!  

Meeting the locals

Selection of tasty cakes at the Merino Cafe

A couple of hours later and it was lunch time, so off the highway and into Albury we went and found this lovely art deco hotel and had an old fashioned counter lunch.

Art Deco Hotel

We arrived in Ballarat that evening, it was dark but even then we could see the magnificence of the buildings and the wide streets.

Over the next few days I can say that Ballarat did not disappoint us. We did the heritage walking tours, visited the art gallery  (which was the first regional art gallery in Australia), we drove out of town and visited little villages had wonderful meals and wine (that goes without saying!) and did the tourist thing at Sovereign Hill. They have this amazing evening show that tells the story of the Eureka Stockade and it is done with lights, pyrotechnics and was truly awe inspiring. I highly recommend that one!

One thing that I did like was the Avenue of Honour, it is 22kms long and it planted with trees all the way along which represent EVERY man from Ballarat who went to WW1.  When you just see tree after tree and know that represents a person it puts it all into a sombre perspective.

So that's holidays over and back to work for me!