Sovereign Hill - Gold Mining Village of the 1850's

This is a separate post, as promised, about Sovereign Hill. It is about the closest thing we have seen to Upper Canada Village while we have been away. For anyone who is not as interested in costumed historic villages as me, feel free to skip this one...

Sovereign Hill is a recreation of the town of Ballarat, Australia in its gold rush boom days of the 1850's and early 1860's. From what I could see of the fashions sported by the interpretors there, things were VERY similar to Canada in 1866. The back story of the village is the boom days, so they have a very impressive village. They have a full main street of shops as well as residences of varying income levels from a tent encampment (near the stream where the visitors can pan for gold) through modest homes. They don't seem to have much in the high end of homes (at least that you are allowed through), but they do have an old bank and a theatre. The village is built on a hill, and has two different gold mines that you can tour (one free with entrance, the other you pay extra for). The hill itself makes the physical appearance of the village interesting. You are constantly going up and down hill as you make your way around.

Like Upper Canada Village, they have a costume department which is theoretically responsible for authenticity. The village has full time and part time staff as well as up to 500 volunteers. The job of the costume department must be huge to keep that many people going. I was told by an interpretor that they have 4 full time people in costuming as well as another 3 or 4 "costume police". Apparently they can be sent home if they turn up with inappropriate hair (a purple streak was mentioned). I am not sure the police were out in force the day we were there because I noticed (1) one boy with a full costume except for the black converse sneakers, (2) a young man with dreadlocks and (3) a woman with hooped skirt and sunglasses (I am willing to concede the sunglasses if our costume department says so, but I have never heard they had them... I am absolutely positive that converse sneakers and dreadlocks were not common fashion items in the mid-1800's).

The whole village is run as a non-profit self funding proposition. There seems to be a real focus on money making. Every building had things for sale. They had school kits for sale in the school and souvenier horseshoes you can have your name punched onto in the blacksmith shop. The whole main street was full of stores which had victorianesque items for sale. The problem with this is that the lines between history and present become very blurred and the educational aspects of the whole venture are seriously compromised. There doesn't seem to be any real focus on presenting authenticity to the visitors and workers happily carry plastic handled screwdrivers in their costume pockets. In the wheel making building, they opened a modern fusebox which obviously ran the belts driving the various machines in front of us and stood there discussing it amongst themselves.

Most of the people in costume are working in the stores and the ones that were wandering around did not seem to talk to anyone outside of costume. In order to find out about the various trades and buildings, there was a schedule of presentations you could go to. You would have to plan a visit very carefully to find out about the different trades as some only had one or two demonstrations a day. I spoke to an interpretor about this and he said it made it easier so as an interpretor you didn't have to say the same thing a thousand times a day. I guess he has a point if you are a volunteer but it is really hard to find out about the place if you want to as a visitor. I know Heather (our 10 year old daughter) was frustrated. She wanted to take the extra gold mine tour. When we asked her why she wanted to so badly she said "at least that way someone will tell us about something".

I think they may have been able to get around the lack of oral interpretation if they put some written information up in the various buildings. Or maybe it is just us and the other visitors don't want a lot of information....

Having said all this, we did buy a two day ticket and return the next day to finish the village. We did really enjoy ourselves. It is well worth a visit if you are in the area. Some of the women are wearing really fancy clothes on the street, presumably because they represent the successful gold miner's families.