Time to leave Bendigo and head back into the country Goldfields area; but first we stopped to replenish a few supplies at ALDI. (Our first Aldi store this trip). We were heading for the town of Newstead, home of the magazine - Restored Cars -. Michael has subscribed to this mag for many years, he has every issue.
We met the editor/publisher/man who started it all, Eddie Ford and had a nice long chat. We got to see his collection of cars, barbed wire, number plates as well as the magazine's vast library.

We left there and headed a little further west to Carisbrook for lunch at the bakery there. It's hard to believe that this area was under water in January this year. (The door to the bakery doesn't close properly now, the frame shifted in the floods). If you look closely you can see some damage remaining; garden walls knocked down, grasses and debris hanging on fences or up in tree branches.
  We were heading south again for Ballarat when we called into the information centre in Clunes for a decent map to navigate through Ballarat to the caravan park we fancied. (Martin wasn't there!) The lady there was good, she asked why we were heading off to Ballarat when they had a caravan park in Clunes and told us that the next day was the day of the Clunes Spring Fair and Agricultural Show.
So we stayed in Clunes for 2 nights. The caravan park was on the banks of the Creswick River and showed signs of flood damage. There weren't many people staying there and we got a lovely shady spot. Looking out through the van window reminded us of an English garden.

We had no need to worry about shade though, the rain started on Friday afternoon, stopped for about 3 hours on Saturday afternoon, whilst we went to the Fair, and didn't stop until Sunday morning.

Clunes is Victoria's first Gold Town, and the streetscape has changed little since the 1800s. It has more than 50 buildings 'of historical significance'; and has featured in more than a few tv shows and commercials.

The Fair was a typical small, country town affair: a few vintage cars, steam engines, sheep, cattle, goats, chickens and horses aswell as some donkeys, ferrets and guinea pigs.

There were more than a few 'beaut utes' and of course the ladies' craft, flower and baking competitions.

The Punch and Judy Show was showing it's age but the crowd of littlies sitting watching were so enthralled they didn't notice.

We woke on Sunday morning to glorious sunshine and headed down the short distance to Ballarat.

For only the second time on the trip we decided to use the GPS (didn't get a map) and amazingly it got us straight to the caravan park easily. Hopefully it will do as well in Melbourne.

Then we had our second disappointment of the trip: the Eureka Stockade is closed for rebuilding! Our caravan park is just around the corner so we walked over to have a look - yep! half the building is demolished. This is a major rebuild so it looks like we'll be coming back to Ballarat.

This flag is in the park next to the Stockade, at least it's something.

Sovereign Hill is still there and only a short bus ride away so we thought about visiting on Monday, but we checked prices and what we actually got for our money. Maybe we're cheapskates but it's nothing that we haven't seen already. So we got the bus into Ballarat and walked around town. 

Not only is there a fascinating selection of 1890s buildings but a lot of Art Deco architecture too.

We went to the Art Gallery - at least we could see the original Eureka Flag!

 Guess what - disappointment no3, the flag isn't on display at the moment!!

Anyway we had a good day walking around and then back to the van for our own little happy hour.

Tomorrow it's back on the road, into the country heading south west to Warrnambool to start on The Great Ocean Road.