Seniors walking tours

AN eager crowd turned out for an interesting walk throughout the city of Ballarat, part of the Senior Citizens Festival, late last month.

The walk started from the Chinese Open Monument in Barkly Street and took participants to interesting Chinese land marks.

Mick Trembath coordinator for the event said, “I worked closely with the Ballarat council, this year, to put together a number of events for this year’s festival and one of the things we were very interested in doing was a series of walking tours.”

“In the past we have had military walking trails, the Chinese one, also we work together with the Mount Pleasant walking group and today is the Chinese walk with local Chinese identity Charles Zhang leading the way.”

Mr Zhang has become an incredible source of information on Chinese history in the short time he has been in Ballarat.

He has an insatiable appetite for the history of the Chinese miners in the Goldfields and likes to talk about it to anyone that is interested in sharing it with him.

About 50 people turned out for the walk with Mr Zhang giving a short talk on the monument and pointing out where the group would be heading on the tour.

The walk revealed where the Chinese community settled throughout the city and the significance of their contribution to the City of Ballarat and surrounding gold fields.

Mr Trembath added, “Judging by the popularity of this tour we should be running more and anyone interested can call in to the Council Office at Phoenix Mall for more information.”