After a walk in the Ballarat Botanical Gardens, we went to Ballarat Tramway Museum. At the tram depot, located at the south end of the Gardens, there is a free museum display of photographs, videos, tramway memorabilia and souvenir and book shop. The Depot is open when volunteer staff is available and usually every afternoon from about 4pm. The Tramcar fleet, including Horse Tram No.1 can be viewed by visitors.
Next day we continued our journey to explore Ballarat in more details.
Our next goal was a visit to Ballarat Tramway Museum, however, it was closed until 12pm, so we went to the nearest park, which was .... surprise! Ballarat Botanical Gardens (!) with real sequoias! How could we miss it? Absolutelly not!
We went to gardens without any hesitation.
After visiting Ballarat Aviation Museum, we went to Ballarat Wildlife Park. This zoo is famous by its animal shows or meet the keepers, when you will have a chance to pat koala and wombat.
Today I am going to tell you about our Jan-2013 trip to Ballarat. We've already been there half a year ago, when we visited Sovereign Hill and Gold Museum. This time we decided to spend more time and to visited Aviation Museum, Tramway Museum, Ballarat Wildlife Park, Botanical Gardens and Gold Museum (once again).
Ballarat Aviation Museum is a truly unique collection of flying aircraft, engines, wartime relics and equipment from the 1920s to the present day. The museum is home to a developmental prototype of a swing-wing fighter, the AA107. They also have on display a Wirraway, DH Dove (nose), an Ikara missile, a Flying Flea, Kenealy Gyrocopter, a Luscombe light aircraft, Piper PA22, an RV6, an Auster, and a collection of aero engines and aeronautica.
The most exiting thing was that we were allowed to sit in the one of the real aircrafts, huge thanks to the owner of the museum!
There is a main difference between Melbourne and Sydney: there is an ocean near Sydney, and there is a bay near Melbourne. Yes, if you live in Melbourne, you have to travel for 1-2 hours (depending on where do you live) to reach real ocean with real waves. As we are not big fans of water (bay/beach/ocean/river/etc.), in summer we usually go to the Brighton Beach and we are quite happy with that. But if you are in Melbourne and would like to see an ocean, the nearest place is Mornington Peninsula.
On our way home to Melbourne we stopped in Holbrook to get some fuel. We saw a huge submarine near the road and decided to check what is going on there.
Before going to this trip, someone recommened us to visit Cockington Green Gardens - park of miniatures. Again, as in Sydney, weather was against us - extreamely hot (+35) plus we had to be in Melbourne by the end of the day. So we spent only couple of hours in the gardens and it is so sad, because everything was so beautiful there...
Bye, Katoomba, see you next time! Hello Canberra!
Regarded as Australia’s most outstanding cave system, Jenolan Caves are the most visited of several similar groups in the limestone of the country, and the oldest discovered open caves in the world. The cave network is very large, with over 40 km of multi-level passages, and the complex is still undergoing active exploration. We spent whole day there, as our friends highly recommended us to visit this place. We visited Imperial and Orient Caves.
We went from Sydney to Blue Mountains National Park early in the morning next day. Leaping ahead, it should be noted that we were amazed with the beauty of the park, it's stunning views, waterfalls, walks, forests and caves.