Its a long way somewhere: Port Fairy to Ballarat

Into a new State

Before we left home i had torn a section out of a travel magazine about the Great Ocean Road in Australia and Port Fairy was a recommended stopping point. This former sealing and whaling port is film-set pretty with magnificent buildings, wide streets, sunlit stone fascades, painted wooden boats and sandy beaches with plenty of restaurants and shops. Its also steeped in the quirky stories of its lawless past.

The protected waterfront of Port Fairy

Such a pretty little town.

Our Motel in Pt Fairy at $100.00 per night, tea, coffee, milk and biscuits included!

Main Street Ballarat on a nice sunny day

Great Architecture in this town.

The entrance to the old boys school

We were fortunate enough to be able to stay in one of our timeshares in the town of Ballarat, we probably wouldn’t have ventured there otherwise, but we are glad we did, what a cool place, very fancy. We have about 20 hotels with our timeshare in Australia so we are planning to use them while we are here, the fact that it is low season here makes it much easier to book into them, we have already stayed in our place in Perth, Dunsborough and now Ballarat, we plan to use our points so it only costs us $53.00 for 3 night stay at a 5 star hotel, yehh..good for the budget.

``Blythewood Grange``, which is the name of our hotel, is a classic piece of rural architecture, built of bluestone, it cost 1,500 pounds to build back then.

Driving up to the hotel it felt like being back in England, built in 1878 as a family home to James Leckie. He was born in Airdrie, Lankarkshire, Scotland and arrived here in 1852, he started out life as an office boy and then tried his hand at mining and became the top manager at the Prince of Wales mine.

James married and had 11 children, in 1878 he built `Blythewood Grange` on the 70 acre mining claim, he died in 1893 at the age of 54. His family continued to reside there until 1902 when it was put up for sale, however it remained unoccupied until 1911, then the property was purchased by the Roman Catholic Church and was called St. Josephs home for boys, it operated as a home for boys from 1913 until it closed in Dec 1981. This was for orphaned boys where they could live in a healthy, pleasant environment and be taught agriculture and trades, at one time it housed 170 boys.

It was kind of spooky when we walked thru the hallways as you could just feel the boys running thru them, fortunately it felt like a happy place but Trev still thought it was a bit creepy, ghostly. It had big fireplaces in all the hallways and the rooms had been redone with very tasteful decor, very nice, it felt like a 5 star hotel, loved it, when you arrived they had to give you a tour otherwise you would have never found your way around, it had saunas, indoor pool, hot tub, work out room, games rooms and internet cafe, huge grounds complete with lake!

When the government would no longer help fund the school it had to close down, the extent of the public outcry gave some indication of the esteem in which the work of St Josephs Home was held by the community at large. Old Boys still return from all over Australia (often with their own families) to walk around the buildings and grounds. Some of the boys from the 40`s to the 70`s still remain in and around Ballarat. They love to reminisce and speak fondly of their years spent here and obviously feel a deep attachment to what they call their only real childbood home. It nurtured and educated nearly 2,500 children most of whom arrived as babies and stayed until the age of sixteen.

The property was sold in 1984 to a hotel and conference facility and then our timeshare bought it in 2003.