Bob:

Since it dawned cloudy and we were fairly tired from the previous day's walkabout, we decided to do indoor activities, starting with an attempt to email the folks back at home. Our first attempt was to try to use the free Wifi at a McDonald's about 6 blocks from our hotel, but that didn't work out so well. First off, the background music was turned up so loud that I literally had a hard time keeping track of my thoughts and what I was doing on the computer. Secondly, though, I just couldn't successfully send messages either by using hotmail or by facebook. The problem seemed to be when packets were sent to the host sites in the U.S., so I suspect that some kind of limitation on out-of-country transmissions was part of the free service. In any case, the whole experience was unpleasant enough that we vowed never to go back to that McDonalds at least. We had much better luck at a pay-by-the-hour internet cafe we visited on the way back to our hotel. The cash rate was $2 per hour, or $1.50 if you paid $5 or more up front. That seemed reasonable, so we paid $1 for half an hour and ran quickly through our email and even managed to communicate back to people. Taking Baby back to the hotel, we headed back out to the Maritime Museum because I particularly wanted to see that special exhibit on Darwin before it was taken down again.

Monika:

Bob:

We were pleasantly surprised that the entry to the basic museum was free as that is very uncommon in most countries. Of course, visiting the museum's collection of historic ships moored outside cost extra, but we put that off until a day where we would have a more normal amount of energy. As it was, I got sidetracked by the exhibits as we walked back to the special Darwin exhibition and ended up learning bits and pieces of Australia's maritime history. The exploration and settlement by Westerners was covered in detail, and I of course was unaware of most of that history.

But one exhibit also covered more recent waves of immigration, and that had some heart-wrenching stories of folks who ultimately became Australians. I had no idea that orphans and children given up by their parents had been shipped off to Australia as late as the 1950s. The idea was for the children to be mentored in Australia so that the boys would ultimately become famers and the girls become the wives of farmers. It was surprisingly similar to the "Orphan Trains" that operated in the United States from the late 1800s to about 1925, and the program apparently had similar disparate results depending on whether the mentoring and fostering really occurred or the children were simply used for cheap, convenient labor. But for those children who had parents in particular, the permanent parting from their parents was often quite traumatic.

Finally making it to the Darwin exhibit, I was surprised by how extensive it was in some ways and then again how limited. I learned much more about the Beagle, Captain Fitzroy, and Darwin's voyage than I had known before, but there was almost nothing on the real significance of the theory of evolution, which has been a watershed concept in human thought. The Beagle was a converted collier, and although it was as sturdy as the dickens, it had a very bluff bow and stern at either end of a rather brick-like hull. Although it apparently handled as well as could be expected, it must have been dreadfully slow.

Fitzroy was far smarter than I had thought. He developed a barometric theory of weather including Highs and Lows, and even instituted the first system of barometric stations around Britain from which he made the first reasonably accurate weather forecasts. That was fantastically creative and not something I would have expected from a person as dogmatic as Fitzroy appeared to be. But due to either the stress of command or inherent tendencies toward depression, he ended up committing suicide by cutting his own throat, a fate that seemed to be not that uncommon for Captains isolated in the position of command on the long and difficult sea voyages of that time. His fate also reminded me very much of Merritwether Lewis's suicide just a few years after the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition in the U.S., a similarly long and stressful voyage except that it was on land.

Monika:

Bob:

I was already tired after just a few hours spent seeing that bit of the museum and we were both getting hungry, so I reluctantly delayed seeing the rest of the exhibits for another day. Since we had rather enjoyed our afternoon meal at the food court the previous day, we retraced our steps there and had lunch. This time, I had the roast beef with vegetables, mashed potatoes, and fried tomatoes while Monika had a big baked potato with chicken and cole slaw on top. I do like it when Monika has a baked potato because for some reason she won't eat the skin whereas I consider that the absolute best part of the potato and always look forward to polishing it off for her.

Walking back South on Pitt Street to our hotel room, we chanced across a shop specializing in Australian knicknacks and browsed a while. I finally bought a nice leather wallet with the Sydney skyline on it for myself and Monika bought birthday cards for Gustl and our granddaughters. That afternoon I napped while Monika updated her journal. We did go out that evening to the IGA on Oxford street to purchase necessary items for our next couple of meals, and while there we decided just to walk along and see what was up. Well, that was an interesting area to say the least, with at least two shops catering to people with fetishes and very curious leather items of intimate apparel. There were also a few lounges that were conspicuously silent about exactly which clientele they were serving, but we thought it better not to poke our noses into those.

The generally young crowd of people was quite cheerful and unthreatening, however, so we felt completely at ease. A few folks had adopted either outlandish partially-shaved hair styles or equally outlandish dress, but I wrote that off as a "Look At Me!" statement of individuality that seems to afflict many of us in the teens and twenties. I could still dress like that, I suppose, but at my age the response would almost certainly be more like, "Who Cares!" Having had our (vicarious) excitement for the evening, we returned to our room, had dinner, and read and watched TV quietly until bed time as us old folks are supposed to do. Actually, I did not envy those younger folks their, ahem, sporting life as I seem to have plenty of excitement nowadays with our decidedly low-key (one could almost say comatose) life style.

Monika: