Out on the town

Approximately 100 kms from Melbourne, there lays a deep, dark crevasse that brought this Fox to his knees and nearly swallowed him whole. But the Fox survives… This is my horrific story.

Do not be thrown by it’s beautifully flat landscape, Ballarat sits on one big rock, famous
for bearing gold and bringing in people by the thousands seeking a quick fix to economic
hardship. At a glance one falls prey to the false assumption that all Ballarat’s sights and treasures begin and end at the gold-rush “tourist traps”. Sovereign Hill still maintains a
low standard of pantomimes and “old time” exhibitions; displaying the crème de la crème of starving student performers who will do just about anything for a candy bar.

Since the introduction of the semiinteractive light-pyro show, “Blood on the Southern Cross”, the Hill has managed to drag in surplus busloads of flashing cameras and “oohs and ahhs”.
If you have a spare $50 you can get into the Hill, the Gold Museum, see the light thingy and grab yourself some Brown’s Confectionary boiled lollies. However, to engage in the complete holistic Ballarat experience one must look past the Hill and all its glory to find the proverbial golden nugget that layeth within. One must dig deep under the smiling façade into the dirty “grit under your nails” world which they call le Ballarat, le Essence where instead of bonnets and parasols, we have beanies and pushers. The timeless courtship of a man and a lady brawling and screaming, hear the sound of ripped flannel? Those bystandees pondering the meaning of life out the front of Centerlink shudder not a single eyelid.

Sturt Street is the main drag (pardon the pun) where on weekends it transforms into a
tarmac - the home of the true Ballarat light show. This road bares the brunt of the most obnoxious neon projecting from the bellies of hotted-up Commodores and Bundaberg Rum sticker-laden utility vehicles, reeking of misappropriated testosterone and diesel distillate.
But unlike those at Tullamarine the people of Ballarat never take off, they abide by no directions from a non-existent control tower. Rather, they run like clockwork with the repetition of the mundane activities of idiots accompanied by Jim Beam T-shirts and Nickleback albums.

This is Ballarat.

First published in Rabelais.