January 14, 2008
We had a terrible time deciding what to do in Australia, before we got here. I don't know if you've noticed, but it's a rather large country, being only slightly smaller than the US mainland. And there's an enormous desert in the middle. Plus, it has only about 20 million people, and public transport isn't especially good. So we fretted and debated and changed our minds endlessly, before we decided we would just see Victoria, the smallest of the continental states (they only have six, can you believe it?), which is densely enough populated to have decent public transport between towns, and has the added advantage of being the former home of David's grandmother, and therefore the perfect spot for some light genealogy. If you call trolling through ships logs light, but to each his own. Or something.
So, for the last week we've been in Ballarat, a smallish town in the Goldfields, the site of Victoria's 30-odd year goldrush. David's been busy making friends with the "gene-ies" in the Australiana research room, and I've been working my way through the library's new mystery collection. We've also spent entirely too much money on some movies, and I finally consented to see a doctor after enduring intestinal pain for a week. Of course it's a traveller's bug, which makes me feel silly for going, but better safe then sorry, right?
All of which is to say that we're now off to one of the other activities we did manage to plan before arriving: seeing the Grampians. Were we plan to do lots more bushwalking, and lots less reading.
