Saturday, December 19, 2009

20th February 2009 Ballarat

In all effect, I'm actually getting ready to head back home. [lol] All the packing is done (thanks to mumsie and daddykins). Just have a few random things about to be packed on the last day. =P

Continue with the blog narrative...
Unpacking was easy to do so it was more or less done pretty quickly.
Kitchen stuff... {though at this point, the kitchen is messier}
Daddykins, Khuan and myself went to visit Ballarat with a tour. The first place they brought us was here... It's a big castle out in the middle of nowhere.
As the castle did not interest me, I spotted 2 horses in the fields beside us.
I was more interested when our tour guide / van driver approached the horses. [shiny eyes]
Before going gaga over the pretty horsies, I got Khuan to photograph how closely I do my macro shoots.
We then returned our full attention to Sunsilk (I think it's the brown horse that Khuan is patting) and Squall in the background there (the white horsie). Why sunsilk? Because it had nice shiny hair. And why squall? Errr.... because we can? [lol]
After we finished patting the horsies, we made our way to (Khuan, intro).. the MAN.
[lol] we didn't really go specifically to see that statue but rather the gold museum where the statue was placed outside of.
There were plenty of gold nuggets to drool over. Seriously, they were huge~! Imagine all the DS, PSP, Playstation 1, 2, 3, n+1, etc.... [drools]
[wipes drool] We got to see loads of photo of the era of the gold rush.
This was a little side tracked if you ask me... in the same museum, there was this little section of the display of ermm... brassiere decorative competition.
right... back to more photos taken during the gold rush madness...
This was the section that showed us how gold was used...
If I could take away just one, it would have to be this one. [grin]
As you can see, here we were back outside and taking photograph of the statue again.
I believe we actually took a lot more photos than what I'm uploading here. =P As usual, I just took to display the "best" ones.
The signage of the gold museum..
Or was it old museum... [snicker]
After that, we made our way to this place... ermm... it's something like a "back to the past" kind of place to show tourist how it was back in the gold rush days.
It was pretty interesting to be in this place...
It was like I was in a movie set or something. [grin]
What I like was that they put small details like putting up these posters.
And there were horse drawn carriages travelling the streets. I don't think they were used to bring tourist around though...
Included in our ticket fares was a trip down the gold mines. We were told to ensure that we followed closely to our guide.
And when we went down the shaft (45 degrees machine operated mine carts), I can see (technically I could hardly see) why they told us that advice. It really was that dark. Good thing our eyes can adjust to light (or rather the lack of light).
In this photo was apparently gold in its natural form. This is how gold looked like when you find it in the mines.. can you feel the gold rush madness?
Anyway, back out in the sunshine, we made our way to the camp which is near the river to try our luck?
This would be the excitement one would feel if you found gold while panning the river....
Not that there would actually be any gold left in that river. Khuan got interested in buying a pocketwatch for sale though (not made of real gold, of course) {we ain't that rich...}
Got her to pose with her new pocketwatch. The design of her pocket watch had 3 horses on the front, amply named sunsilk, squall ... I don't know the last one. [grin]
We decided to have a pie each for lunch. It was yummy~! Hehehe
After lunch, there was this event / performance? (I'm not sure what they called it). Let's go with the word show instead. We waited in the square.
There were a lot of people also waiting for the show.
The show of firing the rifles~! Don't play play. They came marching in and stuff.
The men lining up after they were given permission to put in their ear plugs.
Ready, Aim... FIRE~! What I found more interesting was after the firing show was done, the captain actually gave the fall out command + photography session. Can't really remember how he said it but it was an unusual command. [giggles]
There was this scale thingy, we decided to weigh Khuan and see how much we would get if we sold her off.
The problem would be there weren't any numbers on the scale thingy. [lol] It made for a nice little seat if that was anything.
During the gold rush era, lots of chinese came to try their luck too.
Here was a temple with some TVs showing some stories about the gold rush in the point of view of the chinese.
There was a chinese village replica. Here Khuan and I were looking at the "glued-down" equipments.
Here was daddykins, pretending to be a chinese gold miner getting out of bed.
Here's him, when he was told he just struck gold~! GOLD~!
Included in our tour was this trip to this winery...
I've been to a few other winery before but this one you can buy the alcohol and then purchase these casks to put the alcohol in. Interesting.
We didn't opt the casks but brought back this big bottle of dessert wine. Yummy. This reminds me that we can drink it when I get home. Bwahahah~!
The ballarat trip was a lovely trip. ^_^ This last photo is of the Great Eastern Store, at Russell St. I go there to buy frozen har gaos. [lol]

That's all for now. Until next time, cheers~!

Friday, December 04, 2009

Time certainly flew out the window

[opens the window shutters] [fluffs out the blankets and pillows]


my goodness. the stale air of my blogs. the poor things...
the blog is still stuck in the beginning of the year. and here we are at the end of the year...

oh boy~!

been slacking with the blog I know but at this point, my focus is on the last 2 animations that needs to be done before the course is over (10th december).

I've just finished editing the audio clips, doing the transcription and drawing out the storyboards.... a lot to do. [sigh]

at least i've finished the website that might be shown in the exhibition.
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/portfolios/users/ychan

there you can see what i've more or less been up to while I'm here and also some old works from The One Academy. [snicker]

I think I'll actually be continuing writing down what happens in my 2009 year in Melbourne when I get back home on the 31st December. [lol] Like I said, the Internet here at home is bad bad bad.

love you all and missing ALL of you dearly. cheers~!