While at the pottery, we bought a 4 attractions ticket, which included a tour of the Central Deborah mine. We have really done enough mine tours! But our guide was entertaining and we enjoyed the tour.
We spent the rest of the day using the talking team to explore Bendigo, disembarking for a while at Lake Wennoora for lunch at a lovely cafe overlooking the water. The lake is man-made and small enough to walk around fairly quickly, which we did. There was a fantastic playground and several small islands with ibis nesting on them, which made Ben happy.
On our last day in Bendigo we visited the amazing Golden Dragon museum. This is home to the world's longest dragon Sun Loong, who appears at the Easter festival - we would like to see that! It also tells of the history of the Chinese in Bendigo and their rough treatment during the goldrush (higher taxes than Europeans) and afterwards (such as a Chinese manufacturer being deemed a factory with one employee, while a European manufacturer wasn't a factory until it had 4 employees. ) There were also many exquisite Chinese artefacts that had been brought from China. My favourite was the massive jade coach, which weighs 2.2 tonnes and is intricately carved. There was also a Chinese garden and temple.
On our way out of Bendigo we made a small diversion to Eaglehawk to find the grave of my great great grandfather (with grateful thanks to google, and my cousin Shirley for tracking the site down and putting a stone on it). It was like my very own Who Do You Think You Are? moment to realise my family was part of the goldrush in Victoria.
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