Museum Day

For the past month (at least) our neighbors have been renovating. The noise of electric saws and excessive hammering has woken me up almost all of those days and is often mixed with yelling. This morning was no different but somehow irritated me more than normal. I showered and left the house for a full day of museums.

My first stop was the Immigration Museum, which is located in the beautiful old Customs House. I had already known most of the general information from history classes so I was able to focus more on the specific details of various immigrants' journeys.

Quick timeline of significant events:
1788 Britain sends convicts to Sydney.
1848 First non-British ship of settlers comes from Germany.
1860 British agents paid to recruit unmarried women to Victoria.
1861 Legislation confines Aboriginals to reserves & missions.
1888 Chinese prevented from disembarking ships in Sydney and Melbourne.
1892 Colonial government restricts all non-European immigration.
1901 Federation of Australia.
1965 Labor Party removes the "White Australia Policy" from their platform.
1967 Aboriginals counted in census and governed by Federal legislation.
1993 Native Title Act recognizes Aboriginal rights to their land.

The museum also had a spectacular exhibit about Hampi in southern India. In addition to hundreds of photos taken of ancient Hindu temples and beautiful ruins, there were a couple interactive rooms utilizing techniques I'd never seen before.

One room had a light table with photographs spread across the surface. Each photo had a barcode; when scanned, the slide projector would enlarge the photograph and show it on the wall with a description about the particular image.

Below image from UNSW iCinema Centre

Another room housed a circular screen with panoramic, 3D images of various sites. Visitors stand on a platform in the center of the room and move the projector to both choose which site they would like to visit as well as move around within that site. Other visitors can stand around the room and explore the 3D element of the video, sensing the depth of ancient temples and examining ruins.

Next up was the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. The current exhibit is about the history of technological advances in video. There was information about video games, early TV, cinema, YouTube and so on. Though the material may not sound incredibly new to many of my generation, the reason for visiting ACMI is often to experience the displays.

Highlights included a massive zoetrope, an interactive monster-making silhouette screen and a multi-camera sphere akin to The Matrix.

My favorite was Anthony McCall's You and I, Horizontal. Upon stepping into the dark room filled with fog machine haze and beams of light, you may not think it will be more than a few seconds of entertainment. After all, the light projection on the wall is just a simple outline of a geometric shape. So you take a few steps into the room and block part of the light. Your shadow breaks up the shape on the wall, but it also breaks up the beam of light traveling across the room. And as you continue to move through the beams you start to play more with the light. You can duck underneath the beams, try to block large portions, small portions, or just watch the swirls of fog traverse across the room. And if you wave your hand rapidly enough through the light, colors appear between your fingers.

The third and final museum of the day was the Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria Australia. The collection of work by Australian artists ranges across time periods, genre and artist backgrounds. It covers immigrant settlers' work as well as Aboriginal sculptures and paintings.

The architecture is quite impressive as well. Some art museums attempt to be works of art on their own, and it doesn't always work, but this one does. Placed inside Federation Square, the sharp-angled windows mimic the rest of the building and frame highlights of the cityscape, turning the city into a piece of art itself.

I've spent the past several days not wandering and exploring so much as I have spent them on painting, animating and playing housewife for my busy circus-performing, exam-studying housemates.

In preparation for a large Thanksgiving party, I ventured by train, another train and a bus into the boondocks south of the city. In the land of dead grass fields and car dealerships also lie many warehouses. And in one of these warehouses is the sole retail outlet of USA Foods, the "All American Grocery Store" in Melbourne.

They mostly do business online so the store itself is not much larger than a typical bedroom--and it was packed. I don't know if it was because Thanksgiving is coming up or if the place is always like that, but it was hard to maneuver through the narrow aisles just to get my two cans of pumpkin.

In addition to the Thanksgiving feast, we're celebrating a birthday, a university graduation and, to a lesser extent, my departure. I'm expecting a good show of friends and acquaintances for the celebration; maybe around 25. Thus, I've been doing a significant amount of shopping and preparation. Yesterday I made two enormous loaves of bread to turn into stuffing. Today I'm working more on the birthday decorations (she wanted it to be fairy-themed) and final touches to the pinatas.

Pipemakers Park, Circus

On Friday, the Melbourne Women's Circus opened their end-of-year show. The venue was an old bluestone building in Pipemakers Park. In the late 1800s, the area belonged to a large meat cannery. The business began as a way to make use of sheep no longer suitable for shearing and it did good business for quite a few years.

Walter Hume purchased the land in 1912 and started up a concrete pipe factory with his brother. Within a couple decades the Hume Pipe Factory had become the largest supplier in Australia and exported their goods worldwide. Additional buildings were constructed for increased labor and production; but the company's continued growth led its relocation to Laverton where more space was available. The factory still produces pipes today.

While the factory was located along the Maribyrnong River, many pipemakers enjoyed spending free time on gardening. The location was ideal for growing plants and some men used leftover factory materials to craft structures for the garden.

I read inside a large pipe, out of the rain, while waiting for the show to begin.

The Women's Circus is not a professional circus; rather, it's a community of women from across the city with different strengths and different reasons for coming to circus. Some women are in their 20s, some in their 50s. And they all are amazing to watch.

photo from Womens Circus

It started up in 1991 as a resource for women of sexual abuse. It was meant to be a safe environment where they could learn to take control of their bodies and appreciate them in a new way. Other women use the circus to focus on the strength of their bodies instead of just appearance.

Two of my housemates performed in the show. All three of them actually take circus classes, but Hannah chose not to be a part of the show. Scarlet did trapeze and acrobatics, Jayt played with fire and rolled in a barrel. Though the latter doesn't sound incredibly interesting, it works very well as a humorous interlude. Overall, the show was a fantastic blend of physical beauty, amazing feats and comedy.

Sydney, Day 2

We started off our second day in Sydney by visiting the aquarium. In addition to a variety of fish, there were fantastic glass tunnels underneath the water of two large tanks. One held the dugongs, the other had sharks.

Dugongs are very similar to manatees, with one main difference being their tail shapes. Manatees' tails are round and paddle-shaped while dugongs have fluked tails similar to whales.

After the aquarium we walked along the Harbor Bridge for a view of the city. The bridge was first proposed in 1815 by a convict-architect. No action was taken and more people continued to make proposals until the bridge was finally under construction in 1924. The bridge was completed in 1932. During construction, over 100 buildings had been demolished. While this initially seemed unfortunate, the rebuilding of destroyed buildings provided work for many residents in the Depression.

As we made our way to the Royal Botanic Gardens, I stopped to listen to a man playing didgeridoo on the footpath by Circular Quay. He had a techno-esque beat on CD and was playing didgeridoo over it.

We walked into the Royal Botanic Gardens and were both excited to see the sign that read:

Please walk on the grass. We also invite you to smell the roses, hug the trees, talk to the birds, sit on the benches and picnic on the lawns.

My feet were sore so I took full advantage of the cool, plush lawns. It felt like walking on a pillow while icing your feet.

Annoyingly, the pyramid glass house had closed for the evening; though, there was also an entrance fee that I don't think I would have been willing to pay had it been open. There was more than enough to see in the rest of the gardens.

Sydney, Day 1

According to some people, you can't go to Australia without visiting Sydney. This idea had been pounded into Kelly's mind as well as a bit in my own. It's the largest city in the country and home of the picturesque opera house, which, arguably, is Australia's best known landmark.

By the time we were able to make concrete plans about when to take this vacation all the flights had significantly gone up in price. We considered renting a car but everyone who heard this idea said not to drive. Apparently, the scenery is incredibly boring along the Hume highway. Kelly wanted to see it anyway, and with a rideshare I found on Gumtree (a site akin to Craigslist) it was about 1/4 the price of flying, so we drove up north.

Everyone was right about the view. There was a whole lot of nothing. It was beautiful as the sun set on rolling hills... but that was only for a few minutes of the 10-hour drive.

We arrived in Sydney around 5am and slept in the car for a couple hours before heading out. After stopping for coffee and breakfast, we took the scenic route to our hostel to drop off bags. I was incredibly excited to walk through Hyde Park (and the day after the suburb of Haymarket) as a reminder of my Chicago home.


The Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park was gifted to the city with funds bequeathed in J F Archibald's will. The fountain is meant to commemorate the efforts of France and Australia in World War One--a peculiar statement as it was given to Australia by an Australian, not the French. Archibald was enamored with the French and even changed his name from John Feltham to Jules François. He was also co-owner and creator of the misogynistic, racist, anti-clerical Bulletin news magazine. Quite a character behind such a beautiful fountain.

As we walked along small streets to get a feel for the city, one block quickly switched from rows of buildings to a large cliff with apartments on top. No other cliffs were around; it was quite strange.

Beautiful purple Jacaranda trees lined many of the streets; their fallen flowers decorated footpaths like confetti.

It had been a while since I'd traveled with another person and my style of vacationing didn't always mesh well with Kelly's. She's more inclined to browse through various shops; I'm far more interested in stopping read plaques. Over the course of our trip I tried to stop less frequently and decided to photograph the plaques to read later so I wouldn't cramp her style.


The hostel we stayed at had spectacularly painted doors for each of the rooms. Some were superheroes (Wolverine), some were movie characters (Harry Potter, Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's) and others were abstract designs. They also gave each guest a map and book of coupons upon check-in, which we made good use of.


After dropping off our bags, Kelly and I went out to see The Rocks, Sydney's oldest district. England granted land and convict labor to men willing to settle in the new country. In 1788, the first group of men and convicts arrived in Sydney. There wasn't a prison until 1819, when the Hyde Park Barracks were built, and even then it was only some convicts who slept in the prison. Rather, the convicts stayed in cabins they built in a separate area from the settlers.

Governor Macquarie wanted Sydney to become less of a penal colony and transform into a city. The trade and shipping industries aided the town in growth. By 1840 convict transportation to Sydney had ceased and about 35,000 people resided in the city. Sailors became frequent visitors and pubs popped up everywhere, often with a seafaring name. As the population grew, more schools and stores were also built. "Ragged schools" were made for destitute children and named as such to discourage parents who could afford to pay for education.

Now the district is home to a variety of restaurants, small shops, museums and art galleries.

Kelly and I headed off to Featherdale Wildlife Park in one of the western suburbs. Wallabies and kangaroos roamed freely through the park, as did various birds that Kelly was scared of. Actually, she was scared of the marsupials as well. After passing through one of the gates, I was surprised to find my feet were almost touching a kangaroo's nose. It had bent down behind the gate so I didn't see it before almost walking into its face.

There were also fairy penguins, wombats, Tasmanian devils, echidna, koalas, dingoes, emus, quolls, quokkas...



We spent our evening admiring lightning while aboard a ferry going north across the harbor, then continued to gaze upon the sky show from the beach at Manly.

Tree lighting, MTC sale

Without Thanksgiving or much Halloween celebrations, Christmas had already started to take shape last month.

On the 18th of October I first noticed the giant tree being erected in City Square. Last week there was a large celebration and lighting of the tree, complete with rapping and breakdancing elves. It was slightly terrifying and entirely peculiar.

The Melbourne Theatre Company was changing offices and had an enormous sale to lessen their stock of unneeded items. There was office furniture and supplies as well as a surplus of old costumes, props and set components from past plays.

It was interesting to walk into a room of such peculiar furniture all mixed together. There were leather chairs and a faux fireplace next to a neon yellow, leopard print couch the size of four normal couches.

One room was fairly empty by the time I arrived, but it held items like nose molds and leftover "meant to be broken" ceramics. Though the idea of buying a platter just to smash it was intriguing, I just walked out of the sale with a couple shirts.

Launceston, Take Two

My last day in Tasmania was spent back in Launceston.

I went to the local museum, looked at some art and explored the old blacksmith workshop, which was still in use until the 1990s. There was also a theater showing old government videos. One of the videos was to record the beauty of a small lake in the middle of the mountains before it was to be flooded and destroyed for the creation of another dam. The government recognized the area was unique and paid for this film to be made, but for some reason it didn't seem worth saving the actual lake.

There really wasn't anything left that seemed necessary to see so I spent the day wandering around town and drawing at a cafe.

Hobart

I was relieved to be in Hobart and see people walking about. With 210,000 it's about twice the population of Launceston, and 300 times that of Strahan.

I started off at the museum/art gallery. There was a large variety of things all packed into the building. It's not that it was small or had little to tell about each subject, it was just a very good use of space. Areas of the museum included exhibits about local Aboriginal cultures, civil rights, ships, Antarctic exploration, prison colonies such as Port Arthur, woodcraft, modern art, Chinese art and calligraphy. It was a bit overwhelming.

Though plenty of things in the museum were intriguing, my favorite was probably learning that Aboriginal Tasmanians have a style of basket unique to their culture. They craft water carriers out of large pieces of kelp.

Next up was a walk through the domains and along Soldiers Walk where men are remembered by plaques and trees planted in their names. In 1917 the walk was established. Queen's Domain has since gone through renovations and replanting upon realizing that it would be better to have native trees in the domain.

In the evening I went to a comedy show at the Brisbane Hotel. Some of the comedians were a bit less than funny, but others were hilarious. And the host of the show was spectacular with short bits and banter. There were contests involving Nerf guns and stuffed ducks, a video satire of Frasier, and a few talks with a vampire off stage.

Headlining the evening was Tom Ballard, who won best newcomer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year and works for youth radio station Triple J. We made plans during his show to go out afterward (it's slightly awkward to converse with someone while they are on stage) but the place we intended to go was closed. Instead, I just talk to him and a few other people after the show.

In the morning I headed off to the botanic gardens. Most people have places they tend to visit when traveling; I always like to visit parks and gardens. There was an enclosed area with sub-Antarctic plants. Since the 1950s, Australia's Antarctic territory, Macquarie Island, has been a place for scientists to study the climate down under the down under. The cold house in the botanic gardens mimics the Antarctic climate and exhibits native plants.

After the gardens I went to visit the Penitentiary Chapel. In the early 1800s more and more convicts were being shipped to Tasmania and the current prison wasn't large enough to accommodate them all. Plans were created to build a new, larger prison. So the convicts labored to build the sandstone bricks and make their future cells. After the new penitentiary had been established, it was decided to add on a chapel to aid in the convicts' reform. It was believed that they would never overcome their evil habits without Christianity. The chapel was built with sloping pews to accommodate for cells underneath the floorboards. Luckier convicts got the tall cells in the back, others were forced to crouch into the tiny cells near the front.

Eventually, fewer convicts were being sent to Hobart because the government decided perhaps not every rumored thief should automatically be imprisoned. Because the prison needed less space, two sections of it were closed and turned into courts.

The day was an eclectic mix of activities. After the penitentiary, I went to Town Hall for a flower show with gorgeous irises and mixed arrangements. I was amid a group mostly composed of old women and families.

And after the flower show I stopped off at the Lark Distillery for a tasting of their whiskeys and spirits. The staff was incredibly friendly and the small number of customers allowed for a quite personalized experience.

To the East

I woke early to the sun peeking through the clouds. Our bus departed the station and drove around the area to pick up all of the kids in town. There's no school in Strahan, so apparently the service doubles as a school bus to Queenstown where the nearest school is located. The 45 minute ride with young teenagers was rather annoying. The braces boy next to me talked to his friend across the aisle in horribly constructed code about girls at school and the tourists on the bus. At one point he offered me an earphone to listen to his iPod. I opted to read my book while a boy in the back sang loudly to Avril Lavigne and Blink 182.

We had a brief stop in Queenstown for breakfast. The tiny town was cute, but appeared both proud of and stuck in its mining heritage. In the 1890s there were 42 companies in the western mountain area mining for nine different minerals. Queenstown was plentiful in copper, ore and silver. Nearby areas also had tin, iron, lead, zinc, nickle and gold.

There were paintings around the main drag, mostly in mural form, all of which related to mining. Several sculptures were around as well. Through the town's pride of its heritage, there are plenty of old buildings still standing, though many had fallen apart to the point where I would be scared to step foot inside.

Back on the road we passed through the mineral-rich mountains. Even underneath the clouds you could see the earth's glorious shades of orange, red, brown, white and occasionally teal. The road was also quite fun to ride along as it essed around the cliffs.

Again, I was enamoured with the rapid change of scenery. After the orange mountains we passed a lake where the fog had settled.

Our driver tended to speed so it was difficult to snap pictures. I was surprised how well some turned out.

The next stop was at Lake St. Clair, the end of the Overland Track. We had an hour break there with access to several small tracks near the visitor center. I went for a brief walk over to the lake and a bit into the bush. It was still cloudy out and quite cold so it wasn't incredibly beautiful. In fact, parts of it were rather bleak with baring trees and little greenery.

Birds were still out, however, and I managed to see a pademelon not far from the visitor center. The species used to be referred to as small wallabies but have since been renamed, leaving the former "large wallaby" to simply take the full name.

After the brief walk I stopped into the visitor center to take a look around. The building was interesting in that it not only had souvenirs and maps, but half of the area was a museum about the area. There were old photographs of some of the first bushwalkers on the Overland Track, history of the land, descriptions of native species, and a hologram of the Thylacine.

The Tasmanian tiger, now thought to be extinct, was the largest carnivorous marsupial in Australia. Though it became extinct on the mainland about 2000 years ago, it survived in Tasmania until the early 1900s. The last known Thylacine was a female in the Hobart zoo. She died in 1936.

Strahan

Initially, I’d planned to only be in Strahan for one day. Due to a failure to turn on my cell phone alarm, however, I missed the bus to Hobart. And because it only comes every two days I was stuck in Strahan.

The extra time allowed me to take a hike I’d wanted to do the day before. For some reason the path was closed. It was raining all day, which seemed appropriate for walking through rain forest. Hogarth Falls were beautiful.

On my walk back through town that afternoon, one of the bikers was standing on the footpath by the tavern. He recognized me from the night before and invited me to join the group inside for drinks and watching the Melbourne Cup on TV. Admittedly, none of them seemed to care much about the horse race but had placed bets on it anyway. It was miserable outside so we stayed at the tavern talking sports, art, politics and so on.

The next day I created several sand sculptures. It began with a suggestion of two platypuses. Those two weren't enough to occupy much time--and by this point I'd done everything I wanted to do in town--so I made a turtle and a snail. There were a couple little girls playing with their dads on the playground nearby, so I asked them for advice on what to make next. The girls got fairly excited about a dinosaur and wanted to help. One of them promptly stepped on all of the animals I'd made thus far while the other piled some wet sand into a mound with me. They stuck around for a good fifteen minutes before getting bored and moving on. I finished the dinosaur and think it ended up pretty good.

After creating some art, I went to look at the two galleries. They both had some amazing woodwork as well as paintings, photographs and glass. Most of the wood pieces were crafted from Huon pine. The native tree has an incredibly fine grain, growing miniscule amounts per year, and has thus been highly prized by craftsmen since settlement. Most pine forests were hard to access and high in the mountain bush, which is one of the reasons why the railroads were built to the west from cities like Hobart and Launceston. Had the pines not been so difficult to log and transport there would probably be none left. After a while they realized how slowly the trees grew and that some in the forests were over 3000 years old. Now the piners only use trees after they have fallen naturally. It limits high production of Huon goods but still allows for their use.

The rest of the day was mostly spent birdwatching and drawing. Minimally exciting. Incredibly restful.