Week Three Term Four

Sovereign Hill, a recreation of a 1850's gold mining town.

Peter, a teacher employed by Sovereign Hill explains to the class about Social Justice...

How the aboriginals took bark from a tree without killing the tree...

and how a family lived in the shacks.

Soldiers marching from the rifle firing demo.

Panning for gold.

October 17-21^st.

Another week passes in a blur. Time is starting to fly by.

The school nurse came around and tested everyone on the epipen workshops from last week. She took Don and I into a room and gave us each a sheet with an anaphylaxic scenario on it and we had to explain and act out what we would do to ensure the safety of the child. When we passed the test we got another certificate.

On Wednesday the grade 3 and 4 team took all 150 students on three coaches to Ballarat and Sovereign Hill. This is the pioneer village that recreates the gold mining town of the 1850's. It was an hour and a half bus ride each way and about a three hour visit there. The first thing my class did was take a tour of the mine. All twenty two kids climbed down into the 'mine' and listened to a narration from speakers in the wall that told us the history of the area. At the last stop there was a hologram of a miner digging in the tunnel on June 9, 1958 and discovering the largest gold nugget ever discovered to that point. It weighed a whopping 69 kilograms and is still today the second largest ever found (the largest was also found in Victoria).

After the tour we went to a class room on site where we met 'Sir' Peter who talked to us about our topic of social justice. He dressed the kids in period costumes and told us the history of the area and about the social injustices of the day: whites and aboriginals (the whites pushed them off the land), the government and miners (taxes and licenses to mine), the police and miners (corrupt police ripped up miner licenses and forced them to buy new ones), the Chinese miners (who were treated badly by everyone) and the other miners, and the inequitable roles of men and women (the men controlled all the money and the women were subservient and did all the hard house work and cooking).

After lunch we took our own walking tour around the village, before going back to school. The kids especially liked the musket firing demo and opportunity to try their hand at panning for gold. The bus ride was good as the kids watched a movie.

As a side note Peter told me he had been working there as a teacher for 27 years! Plus he did a teacher exchange to England a few years back and his exchange partner worked at Sovereign Hill. Now that would be a different experience! Everyday you would get a different group of kids which might be challenging but there would be no report cards!

On Thursday we were supposed to have a surprise get together for Libby, but she begged off with a headache. So, I asked Joel if he wanted to go for a drink anyway, and we went to the Treehouse where we met up with Anne and Leora. We had a good talk about school politics and traveling. Leora and I were the last to leave and after she left I went for a walk around the St Kilda area and had some sushi before heading home.