The Quest to Keep Myself Occupied – Part F, Camera Museum

It didn't take much time, but before I headed to airport for my flight (hopefully) to Perth, I was walking along the street and saw a museum with a whole bunch of old cameras. And, in a blast from the past, a bunch of film that I used when I was a kid.

The Quest to Keep Myself Occupied – Part E, Geelong

During the Great Ocean Road tour, our guide Jude had taken us through Torquay and Geelong on the way back to Melbourne and had said that Torquay in particular was an interesting place to visit because it is ground zero for surfer two of the biggest surfing equipment and clothing companies in the world, Ripcurl and Quiksilver. They were both started in Torquay. I decided to take a day trip out and go and see Torquay. Unfortunately the weather was chilly and extremely windy as well as somewhat rainy. It was clear by the time I got off the train in Geelong that it wasn't the best day for this little jaunt, and I decided not to find the bus to Torquay. I would spend my time in Geelong.

Geelong was quite nice. Again it seemed that it would be quite a good place for a day out on a warm summer day. It's not too far from Melbourne. There is a long, narrow beach along the bay and lots of little wharves and restaurants to stop for a coffee or a bite to eat. Or, in my case, they made great places to get out of the wind and spurts of rain.

One of the neat things about Geelong that I discovered as I walked along the shore were some carved poles that were placed at intervals along the path. At first I thought they were just associated with the rowing club that I passed. But as I continued along the shore, I kept seeing them. They are sculptures of people in various roles and guises. Some were quite interesting.

I wondered though if there would be any representation of the Aborigines. There was. But only slight. These were the only ones along the whole way.

Later I went through a large park and passed a sign explaining facts about fruit bats.

It was then that I started thinking about the noises that I was hearing. I hadn't paid them much notice before reading the sign, but then it occurred to me that those were the noises of animals. I looked around, and up, and noticed the trees all around me were full of a colony of fruit bats. Thousands of them.

Although cold and rainy, it was a nice day spent in Geelong and, more importantly, away from Melbourne.

The Quest to Keep Myself Occupied – Part D, The Immigration Museum

Australia is a nation of immigrants and what is left of the native population. More than even Canada or the United States, it is the immigrant story that makes up the story of the country. In Melbourne, there is a museum that looks at that history.

The Immigration Museum provides quite a fascinating look at the development of Australia. And it's also disturbing. But it is quite an interesting presentation. The presentation did make clear Australia's very racist roots. (Not that Canada is any bastion of purity on that matter.) But the racism did have an ironic twist or two.

And I found out the origin of the word “tariff.”

The Quest to Keep Myself Occupied – Part C, Australian Rules Football

The next day, I attempted to go and take in some Australian culture. Yes, yes, I know. What's that? Is there such a thing as Australian culture? Isn't that some kind of mythical concept? Kind of like Canadian culture?

Well there are some things that uniquely Canadian. Smarties that are chocolate coated chocolate, for instance. Maple syrup. The heart attack in a bowl called Poutine. Who do you do? Oot and aboot. Eh.

So it is with Australia as well. And Australian Rules Football is one of those things. From what I can tell from watching a couple of games on television, it's part rugby, part soccer, part basketball, and all rough. It's hard to explain, and I am unable to show any photos. A friend from the hostel and I decided to go and take in the game at the nearby stadium. Unfortunately it was one of the biggest, and most popular games of the year in the regular season. Two local teams with a strong rivalry were playing. We headed to the 100 000 seat stadium along with a large number of other people. (I had read an article in the paper a couple of days previous to this about how people were complaining that everything about the game was going up, salaries, ticket prices, revenues, everything except the seating capacity of the stadiums. At 100 000 I thought that was quite large and they ought to go see a football stadium in Canada.) As it turned out there were too many. When we arrived, all the general admission tickets were sold out and we were out of luck.

So we headed to a pub and watched it on television instead. It was interesting, but I still would have liked to have experienced that bit of Australian culture (okay, okay, it is a hilarious thing to say, wahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!) with a large and raucous crowd.

Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!

After the pleasant day checking out the markets, I returned to the hostel. The next day was nice again, and I thought I might ask the hostel staff what I should do for my last day in Melbourne. I was running out of ideas myself and figured they could help me out on that. When I asked them, they remembered that I had been stranded by fog and Tiger on the Wednesday and they kind of gave a bit of a start. It seemed that Tiger Airways had been grounded by the airline regulators for some kind of safety violations. There would be no Tiger flights for the next week. I slumped for a moment before deciding what to do. I got on the internet and found a reasonable flight for the following Wednesday. I booked into the hostel for the remaining days until then and I spent the rest of the day moping. Sigh!

The Quest to Keep Myself Occupied – Part B, Sandal Shopping and The Yarra River

Soon I am heading back into southeast Asia and while I was in New Zealand, my last pair of sandals broke. The people of Lavena made a valiant effort, but in the end I am just too hard of things. They bit the dust. They were a Philippine brand, and I really liked them. But I didn't think I would be able to find any Sandugos here in Australia. So I have been looking around for a new pair, but I had reached the conclusion that I probably wouldn't finding anything suitable for a reasonable price here. Nevertheless, with my fog-grounded idleness, I had some time to kill. So I headed to a factory outlet mall to have a look. I did find some sandals that looked quite nice there, but the store-keeper couldn't tell me how they were made. She didn't even seem to understand the question I was asking about the sandals. (I wanted to know if the straps that go around the foot and keep it in place on the sandal were joined together under the foot pads. Previous sandals that I have had were put together so that straps around the foot would go under the foot pad, between the sole and just be glued there. Over time and use, the glue loosens and then the strap pulls loose and no longer holds the foot in place. This happens particularly when wandering around in watery areas. Water does the glue in fairly easily.)

I find this frustrating. I remember a time when salespeople knew about the products they were selling. And a question would elicit an answer. Or if the salesperson didn't know the answer, he or she would go and find out. This woman just said she didn't know. So I said I would think about it and I left. The sandals, despite being a supposedly good name, were still fairly expensive. If I am going to spend some money on a pair of sandals, I want to know that it won't fall apart the first chance it gets. So I left the store. And this still didn't galvanize her into any sort of action to get the answer I was wanting so that she might make a sale. Apparently she was just an employee and not on commission. When I bought my the pair of Sandugos in the Philippines, the people at the stand knew exactly what I was going to want to know about them and they answered the question before I even had a chance to think about it and ask. Western society is going to a slow death, I think.

After I left the factory outlet mall, I headed down the waterfront of the Yarra River. There is a whole bunch of construction of homes along the waterfront, with some already finished. The people who live there must be loaded. Here is the view, complete with having to look around the sailboat at the private dock.

Here are the homes. Sometimes, I wish I had the kind of money these people must have. But would I be changed by it? I think I ought to have the chance to find out. :)

The Quest to Keep Myself Occupied – Part A, Queen Victoria Market

The Queen Victoria Market was supposed to be quite interesting for a visit. It is a large old set of warehouses that most days during the week is turned into a market selling all kinds of stuff from souvenirs to clothing to candy to fruits and vegetables. I hadn't felt pushed to visit it yet, it being just a place to spend money and a market that probably wouldn't be as interesting as the open markets of Asia. But I thought it was time to give them a look. And it was reasonably interesting, even though I wasn't sure how it could be profitable for most of the people. There didn't seem to be many shoppers about and it was mid-morning by the time I got there. There were more people in the farmer's market areas, but the souvenir stalls and clothing shops were sparsely populated with shoppers. I imagine it must be quite different during the summer months when it's warmer and there are more tourists about.

And I Thought Only England Sent Their Convicts to Australia

I was crossing a bridge along the Yarra River in the central area of Melbourne. The bridge has all these glass panels showing all the different countries from where people immigrating to Australia originated. When I saw the one for Canada, I was surprised to find that Canada also sent some political headaches to Australia, the prison. It is hard to see in this photo, but right in the middle of the panel it says 1838 – convicts.

Stranded and Checking Out St. Kilda

I had booked a ticket from Melbourne to Perth for the last Wednesday of June. On the Tuesday evening, I noticed a deep fog sweep over the central area of Melbourne. In my mind, I thought that might just prove to be a problem as I remembered Jude (on the Great Ocean Road tour) telling us that the south coast gets these amazing pea soup fogs. If the fog were to persist through the morning, I thought my flight might get cancelled. I checked the internet before I went to bed. But nothing showed as a problem, so I went to sleep hoping for the best. Bright and early (well, early at any rate since I am not so bright after getting up at 3 in the morning), I got up and headed to the shuttle bus terminal to head to the airport. There was fog in Melbourne, but it didn't seem too bad. However, as the bus continued towards the airport, the fog got deeper and deeper. After arriving at the airport, I checked in and got my boarding pass and cleared security to the waiting area. This particular airport is a budget terminal and only serves the two airlines of Tiger Airways and Jetstar. There happened to also be an early morning flight for Jetstar, and as I was sitting in the waiting area, a woman on the Jetstar flight approached me and asked if the Tiger flight was going to be delayed by the same length of time as hers. I said that it appeared that Tiger was going to fly. At check-in they had nothing about a delay. And they were giving every indication that they were preparing the flight for take-off. The woman was a bit surprised, as was I, but I just thought that maybe they had more information about the fog situation than anyone else.

Shortly thereafter, Jetstar announced to their passengers that since their flight was being cancelled, they would be transported to the other Melbourne airport where they could arrange to get on other flights. And off they went. Meanwhile we Tiger passengers were sitting there wondering. Well, at least I was wondering. I was wondering why Tiger seemed to be going to fly when Jetstar had deemed it too dangerous to take-off. Finally, at the time we were supposed to board the plane, they came out with an announcement saying that the flight was going to be delayed while the captain evaluated the fog and weather. The flight was going to be delayed by 2 hours. I was not impressed with the timeliness of their informing their passengers, but there was nothing to be gained by getting upset at that point. Best to get to my destination before registering my displeasure.

Somewhat later, they came out with a further announcement saying that the flight was being cancelled, they were very sorry, and they would refund the tickets. I waited for a few minutes to let the first rush of unhappy passengers get dealt with before approaching the check-in desk. Meanwhile, I got my bags and listened as the Tiger employee standing at the shuttle bus desk finished a call to the shuttle bus company. She then told everyone that the shuttle bus company had told her that if flights were cancelled, they wouldn't service the airport. They were of the opinion that there was no need. Hmmm... No need? How about all the passengers they had transported to the airport with no other way back to anywhere useful (like downtown Melbourne) aside from taxis. That seemed a bit irresponsible of them and I told the Tiger employee that she should convey that to them. She said she would, she gave us contact information for the bus company, and she suggested that the best way back to town would be to share a taxi to the nearest train station (about 5 to 10 minutes away) and get a train back to town. Great.

Then I headed to the check-in desk to try to deal with my flight to Perth. I wasn't in any rush, I had a ticket booked with them, and I wanted to fly on that ticket if possible, rather than having to mess around with getting a different with another airline. Unfortunately, Tiger was also upgrading their computer systems that day and couldn't reschedule my flight. I was told that I would have to come back to the airport at 4:00 in the morning the next day in order to see if there was any spots on the next day's flight. And it wasn't guaranteed. That didn't sound like the best plan. But she didn't offer any other ideas. They were really starting to show me why they were a budget airline. I gave up and found someone to share a cab with and went back to Melbourne. Now I was going to have to find something to do with myself for at least an extra day, maybe longer depending on how long it took me to sort things out with the airline.

(I did get them on the phone later that day to deal with them. It took about 45 minutes of waiting on hold, but I got confusingly booked onto a flight for four days later, the Sunday. I say confusingly because their phone operators were also unable to access their computer systems because of the system upgrade. So the woman who dealt with me had to take long moments away from the phone to go and have someone put me on the roster for that flight and then fill out some kind of written request to have it be without charge, as the flight on the Sunday was about twice the price. Because the delay had not been my fault, they were not going to charge me, of course, but the process was made more difficult by the fact that their computer systems weren't completely accessible. She told me though that they would send me an itinerary to me when things were sorted out. It was like a perfect storm of problems to leave Melbourne that day.)

So this is what I decided to do. Melbourne is set on the north end of a large bay, called Philip Bay. The central business district (downtown area for those of us from the northern hemisphere) is inland along the Yarra River. One of the outlying communities of Melbourne, St. Kilda, lies along the shore of the bay. I bought a transit day pass and went to have a look.

St. Kilda is an older neighbourhood. It has retained the older buildings and smaller streets that were common way back when. Many of what were houses have been converted into cafes and restaurants and small shops.

Nearby there is an old amusement park, still in operation, with an old wooden roller-coaster. It was just nice to wander through the neighbourhood.

St. Kilda sits on the bay and there is a nice beach that must be quite packed on a warm summer day.

I walked along the beach for a while and reached a pier with a yacht club at the end of it. As I was walking along the pier, this guy with a dog passed by. As the dog passed, it barked and kind of startled me. The man started talking to me and apologized for the dog. He was heading into the yacht club and invited me in. He said I looked like a trustworthy sort. He was heading out on his boat for a race, but I was welcome to look around and take some photos of the boats moored on the docks. I always think that yachts make great photos. Of course, they make great photos when other people take the photos. It never seems to work out for me.

After wandering around the pier for a little bit longer, I headed back to catch a different tram into town. Along a different route there was the Melbourne War Memorial.

It is massive. It sits on top of a hill in a huge park. I was very impressed by the structure.

Underneath is a crypt with plaques for all the campaigns and battles where Australians fought and died.

On the ground floor is a chamber with altars and nice art work.

A stairway leads up to the top of the memorial building and from there one gets a really nice view out over the area.

After that it was back to town to make phone calls to see if I could get out of town any time soon.

The Melbourne Museum and King Tut

While I was in Sydney, I kept seeing a bunch of billboards advertising the King Tutankhamun exhibit in Melbourne. When I decided to come to Melbourne, I had to opportunity to go to the exhibition. So I went and found the museum. I initially went on a Sunday, just to find out about the exhibit and how to get tickets and all. Well, Sunday is a peak day for the exhibit, and like a good capitalist venture, they charge more on a Sunday. It's a good thing I wasn't interested in seeing it on the weekend. It's actually about 20% more to go on the weekend. I think that's a bit ridiculous. The regular museum exhibits are all the same price, no matter what day you visit though. So I thought maybe I would visit the museum one day and then come another day to see King Tut. When I enquired about whether I would be able to buy just a King Tut ticket, I was informed that the regular exhibits were included in the ticket. So I scratched that idea and decided to visit the whole museum on the same day. I was hoping, of course, that the King Tut exhibit wasn't going to be so engrossing that I would spend all of my time there and not have time for the regular exhibits. Sometimes I surprise myself and how naïve I can be. But then, Calgary is a small potatoes city and we don't get a lot of those big exhibits in town. So I guess I can be forgiven.

It was around about this time that I noticed the board with times for the King Tut exhibit. There were half hour intervals for entrance and you bought an entry time. On this day almost all the times were full and the others said that entrance tickets were limited. Well, that was good, I thought. There would be no huge rush of people. It would be controlled and not crushingly crowded. I decided I had better check out the situation for the next day. I didn't want to arrive and not be able to get in because it was sold out. I was told that a lot of school groups were coming in during the early part of the week and that it would be best to get a ticket beforehand. So I did. My time was 1:30-2:00, so I would have plenty of time to view the rest of the museum. Or so I thought.

The next day, I headed to the museum bright and early for opening time at 10:00. The Melbourne Museum is built right next to the Royal Exhibition Building, an old landmark and the building where the first Australian Parliament was convened. It's old and Victorian and speaks of the past.

By contrast, the Museum is a thoroughly modern building.

The two styles contrast, yet oddly complement each other as well and the two buildings work well so close together.  (Althought it doesn't necessarily show in this photo.

Inside, the museum is engrossing. They have all the usual sorts of things that can be found in national museums. There is representation of the history of the country, the history of the previous peoples (in this case, the Aborigines), a broader representation of the world, as well as the natural world. But where many museums that I have visited are kind of dull, with visitors only looking and reading, the Melbourne Museum has lots for the visitor to actually do.

I began by turning left from the entrance and heading towards the Aboriginal area. At the back of the museum is an area where they have a little garden that espouses the cooperation between the Aboriginal groups and the museum to build an accurate look at Aboriginal history, culture, and contemporary contributions. In contrast to what I saw in the Kakadu National Park, it seemed that here, that cooperation was real. Inside the actual Aboriginal exhibit no photos were allowed as there are cultural taboos against the display of images of people who have died. But the two areas were fascinating. The first space was dedicated to Aboriginal women and their crafts. There were all sorts of bags, hats, mats, and other things made of traditional weaving materials and using traditional techniques. As I learned in Kakadu from Gander, the only way knowledge from the older generations to the younger generations is by direct teaching and only once the young have been deemed ready for learning. There were many weaving techniques that were apparently directly attributed to a particular person, were not passed on due to a lack of prepared youth, and have been lost. That's too bad as the work was so well done.

In the second section there was a number of vignettes and scenes showing the Aboriginal connection to the land. This ranged from the standard exhortations about how the Aboriginal culture cares for the land and how they listen to nature to find the path forward, to a vehicle that had been acquired by local Aborigines and converted to a hearse. The hearse was then used to convey the remains of members of the bands that had died, even years before the Aboriginal culture had been formally acknowledged (and therefore those individuals had been buried in other places), to traditional lands for “proper” burial. But there was also a small theater where a series of documentary vignettes were being shown. These told individual stories of the Aboriginal people. A person from one band or another would tell their story, and most seemed to include their connection to the land on which they were born, to which they had a connection. They were not the stereotypical Aboriginal people, wearing loin-cloths and skins with paint and tattoos, carrying spears, and other such obvious signs of Aboriginal-ness. They were well acquainted with western culture and accepted a lot of it. They also had deep respect for their roots and culture. It was a real fusion of the two and an acknowledgement of the influence of both. And the vignettes seemed to suggest a true wish to portray cooperation and peace. I could have watched those little vignettes all day. However, there was lots more to see and experience in the museum, so I tore myself away and moved on.

There was a large section on the Pacific Islands, some of which I had visited. Then it was into the section for Melbourne history. This was the one blot on the museum that I would give. The rest of the museum was well laid out and had structure and obvious planning. The Melbourne section seemed like a minor explosion. It was almost as if the curators had gone into the archives, taken all the stuff relating to Melbourne and had just thrown it into the room. Then they went and put labels on everything and let people in to see it. It was chaotic and confusing. It didn't seem to have much of a vision. But they did have a real life and life-sized version of the Australian coat of arms.

There was also the Australian claim on Phar Lap, the race horse that was New Zealand born, but bought by an Australian and raced as an Australian horse before going to the US to make a big splash, only to die under mysterious circumstances after his first big race. In some sort of arrangement to try to reconcile the claims both countries made on Phar Lap, the national museum of New Zealand got his heart and skeleton, while Melbourne Museum has the rest of him. Sounds vaguely Biblical.

In the middle of the museum was a large indoor forest. Many of the native plants and trees were there, plus a river, too. It is quite amazing to see. Beyond the forest, on the other side of the museum was the natural history section. And this was astounding to me. There was a section on the human body including, oddly, an accurate representation of the various phases and products of the digestive system, right down to the very end product. Enough said on that, I think.

There was a dinosaur section with a very large pterodactyl.

And there was a huge collection of stuffed animals, all arranged by continent of origin.

That was amazing enough, but then there were these LCD scanner screens that were placed around the room. They had some kind of camera on them that could be pointed at various animals around the area. Once a desired animal was shown on the screen, the viewer could touch the animal, whereupon a whole set of information about the animal was printed on the screen. You could even download the information onto a phone or other bluetooth-equipped device. I wish we had this kind of thing when I was young. Technology can be so amazing.

I had spent a lot time in earlier sections of the museum though and I was unable to spend a lot of time in the natural history section, as my time for the King Tut exhibition was approaching.

I scurried down to the King Tut exhibition and waited my turn. I turned down the offer to have my photo taken in front of a green screen so that I could be photoshopped into some suitably Egyptian scene. I hate those things, but at least on this one I was asked if I wanted to. Usually they make you do the pose for those shots and then assail you as you are leaving to try to entice you with a reminder of your experience. Then I decided to rent the audio-tour and waited to enter. Now, I think it's a pretty good exhibit, as far as those sorts of exhibits go. They have it all set up quite nicely. The pieces are interesting, as are the stories that go with them. They did their best to balance the wish of many people wanting to go the exhibition (by having limited numbers of people entering the exhibit at any one time) with the need to pay for it by having as many people as possible go through the exhibit (by “limited numbers” I really mean not cheek by jowl, but almost). It was still a struggle at times to get close to anything past all the milling people. There was nothing remotely interactive about the exhibit beyond the traditional go in, look, read, maybe listen, and move on. And the audio-tour, although helpful for adding more information to the experience, was really just a disguised cash grab. There was nothing that wouldn't have been just as useful being printed at the spots. And there wasn't all that much to the audio portion for the price. I'm glad I went to see the exhibit. But I wouldn't go again. And compared to the rest of the museum, it is one of those times when it would have been much better to go to King Tut first and then the rest of the museum, for the hands on, interactive nature of the regular museum exhibits was so much better and left me somewhat disappointed.

The Laneways of Melbourne

Although thoroughly modern in many ways, Melbourne has retained a lot of its historical buildings and city layout. Part of this historical layout are the narrow lanes between a lot of buildings, particularly in the central core. Now the laneways have not been left unmolested. They are great places for graffiti artists to ply their trade. I don't know if Melbourne ever made an effort to stamp out graffiti, but at some point they did decide to allow graffiti to be left up. There are a number of laneways that therefore have this amazing array of graffiti showing a lot of artistic talent. Anna, Julie, and I met one day, and Julie took us to see one of these laneways and the art inside.