Ballarat

 Today's bird is.... the black swan.  Native to Australia, the state bird of Western Australia, but common throughout the southern states. These swans were on Lake Wendouree, a large urban lake in Ballarat.

The lake is 6 km around (I walked perhaps half of it).  Boat houses and student crew teams practicing on the lake.

But I spent most of the day in the regional branch of the Public Records Office of Victoria, pouring through registers of mining claims, court of mines records, and surveys of mining claims.