Pink Hair and Old Trams

This long weekend is the Ballarat Begonia Festival. The weather was proper Autumn style, with grey skies and cold air. We went to the festival to check out the amazing massive lego begonia they had this year. It was as wicked as it sounds. There were just under 100,000 pieces of Lego in the whole piece. After wandering through the event and gardens we ended up at the Ballarat Tramway Museum.

I’m pretty sure that in the last week I have seen more trams than in the rest of life combined. It’s been the first time I’ve been on vintage/heritage trams (trammed it up in Melbs and Paris on modern trams plenty of times). The first was in Bendigo while filming with their Tourism team and then the Begonia Festival happened. When we got to the end of the gardens and arrived at the Tram Museum I was so excited, I had to go in and check it out. Turned out I knew the curator of the museum and we took a few snaps of my outfit while there.

I planned my outfit of bright colours to go with the begonias and flowers of the festival. The irony of this is that we took no photos at the festival, and took all our pictures in a setting that clashed magnificently with what I was wearing. I have resolved to come back to the museum and do some more outfit photos.

The Tram Museum is tiny, but fun. There’s a shed which houses all the tram carriages. The office and tiny gift shop are also built into one of the trams. It’s pretty fun. You climb in and out of all the trams (apart from the one below, which I got onto because I asked very politely) and sit in the drivers seat if you like. It’s the sort of thing that would have fascinated me as a kid. Even having grown up in Ballarat, this is my first time visiting.

This is a horse drawn tram that was salvaged from someone’s back yard. The museum has worked to restore it to it’s original state.

I got really excited when I noticed the stained glass in this carriage. I had no idea that trams could have something so intricate and delicate on them. This was my favourite tram so I bought a brooch of it.