On our big trip around Oz my partner and I visited Perth first (mainly because his family live here) and I begged him to take me to see the Perth Mint. After six weeks of seeing everything else, I managed to get him to take me. I was so excited being a girl that adores gold, old and historical things and read up on the whole experience in my lonely guide planet book (please see my other review on this item).

On entering the grounds of the Mint you can see the age and historical value of the building, surrounded by skyscrapers and modern shopping malls, the several hundred year old Mint sits quiet comfortably among it. The brick laid court yard has a guards post, a bronze statue commemorating the first gold nugget found in the outback and well attended flowers and small gardens. The first impression of the front of the building is impressive and has been well restored and maintained over the years. There are steps leading up to two doors (one side for women to enter and the other for men to enter when it was a working Mint). Above the doors and slightly to the left you can see the veranda of the Governor's housing quarters.

We continued back into the building, through reception and onto the "museum" side of the tour. The tour was impressive, with wax figures showing the conditions of mining for gold in the outback, the rate of death and illness and the tools and clothing used to find gold. We then continued to the vaults of the Mint and looked at over 200 solid gold bars from a range of countries from around the world (note no photography, there are security alarms and cameras everywhere and you can get your camera's confiscated if you breach these conditions). We also got to try lifting a solid gold bar in a box (a large box with a big enough slit to get one hand in and is chained down with metal rods), which was really, really heavy! We then got ourselves weighed in value of gold, I was quiet pleased at being several million Aussie dollars, until my partner weighed in at over five.

After this we walked into the heart of the mint and watched a fantastic display of molton gold being poured (one of the main reasons i went) to create a solid gold bar. We was informed that the when the Mint was being converted into a tourist attraction (it was too small for production rates) the dust and dirt that had gathered in the ceiling over the years was sent to be filtered to see if any gold traces (when gold melts some is converted into gold particles) were left in the ceiling. They found over $600,000.00 dollars worth. Imagine what the walls must contain! However since the building is heritage protected we will never know.

The tour took was about an hour overall, the crowds were not large and we walked around in a small tour group.

Before we left we looked at the "Gold Shop", again this aimed alot at tourists, a piece of gold nugget about a third of the size of your small fingernail was about $50.00 or more. The packaging for this was in a plastic bag with a black backing card with some information about the mint. It also stored alot of jewlery (i found the most stunning gold and diamond ring at half price), novelty items (magnets, pens etc) and rare gold coins.