No worries, mate!

It was not originally a scheduled part of this trip, but by the time most of you read this I will be on a plane going to Queensland (as opposed to Victoria where I am now) It's always a risk when traveling on business that you will discover you need to do but didn't plan on. That's what's happened here.

Of course there's another sort of risk that comes mostly from other people, it's the "while you're in the neighborhood" effect, or in this case the "while you're in that hemisphere" effect. There's talk of a meeting in Tokyo. If that's combined with the delays I'm expecting in the Singapore segment of the trip, it could be a while before I come back. No worries though! I figure all I have waiting for me in Chicago right now is an empty apartment, and I can't say that I'm too eager to leave. I have yet to meet an ugly woman in Ballarat, so I'd have to be nuts to really want to leave.

Before the trip to Queensland though, maybe I should say another word or three about my time in Ballarat. It's a pleasant place with plenty to do (when you have the time) To get an idea, go to www.ballarat.com and look at all of the attractions, and activities. I've barely scratched the surface of that list and already I'm sold on this town.

Of course one of the big attractions for me was the history of the town. This was originally a boom town of the gold mining era (mid 1800s) and was the center of a significant, albeit brief, revolt against British authority.

To keep this bit of history alive, they've created a living history village (which is quite large) with all sorts of shops, machinery, artifacts from the gold rush era.




This was only one of roughly three main thoroughfares through the living history village. Every building had something and someone on the inside. There were even functional steam engines running shops full of machines using old belt and lineshaft power supplies.



Really quite incredible if you ask me.