Smythesdale

We spent our first 3 days in the Ballarat area 20kms out of town at a place called Smythesdale. This little town offers a camp spot for travellers, complete with water, toilets (BYO loo paper!) and hot showers, for a donation that you leave at the Post Office.

I saw my first genuine (ie, not overly touristy and not overpriced) antique shop in the main street of Smythesdale and I hugely recommend a visit there for anyone in the area. There were all sorts of unique, interesting and quirky items. I felt quite nostalgic seeing a number of things that were similar to items that had been in my Gran's and Nana's houses when I was a child. I found a book I was so tempted to buy... but had no reason to. It was like a kids exercise book from school for working with pastels. It had velum sheets in between each drawing page to protect the work. It was done by a female and each page was dated from 1928 (making it 88 years old). Each page had a simple drawing on it, eg balloon, an orange, a rabbit etc. There was something so simple and elegant about it. I wish I had have bought it but really, what could I do with it?

We also found a BMX (or in Rory speak a "Mex") track that the kids had a ball on. Rory rode it on his balance bike, which is really quite funny if you think about it and I can just imagine what the teenage BMX riders would think if they saw it. Tilda managed to do her first ever jump over one of the jumps which she was rightly very proud of! Despite riding in the rain, the kids loved it and keep looking for new BMX tracks now.

Greg had a fossick in the river and found some more gold. In fact, while helping him, I panned my first lot of gold! Super exciting stuff... I found three flecks of gold!!!. So all up now we've possible made a dollar or so. We have a long way to go to even recover the cost of the gold pans (yep, pans plural because Tilda needed her own).

(I don't have any photos of Smythesdale, just videos from the "mex track")