Wanderung 20

Australian Walkabout

May - June 2009

Thursday, June 4th, 2009, Melbourne, Immigration Museum

Bob:

This was the day we finally got to the immigration museum, and we found it very interesting. The two floors of exhibit halls covered the extensive waves of immigration into Australia, which except for the Aboriginal population is a land of immigrants just like the U.S.. But for a long time, the Australian policy was to actively prevent non-Europeans from entering the country.


 

There were fascinating first hand accounts of immigration and the life and times of Australia from the immigrant's point of view. Some exhibits showed the different trades that had been brought to Australia by emigrants entering the country.

One big exhibit was on the differences in the experience of passengers sailing in the steerage, second class, or first class accomodations on the immigrant ships. And boy did that make a difference! Similarly, the shift from sailing ships to steam made a huge difference in the time required for a passage to Australia. Ultimately, of course, the development of luxurious passenger liners and then of intercontinental aircraft made travel to Australia much more pleasant and less traumatic, but leaving a familiar culture and folks you know still makes immigration difficult for most people, at least in my opinion.

Upstairs we found a great exhibit on a historic site in Hampi, India that had been archaeologically excavated for at least 25 years. A really unique projector combined with polarized glasses allowed us to see panoramic 3-D images of many different locales in the excavations. It probably was the next best thing to being there, and I enjoyed it immensely.


 

Monika was finally weary after three hours of traipsing around the museum, so we broke off to have lunch, download pictures from the cameras, and finally take the tourist bus around Melbourne. That bus loop is free and is just as good as the "Hop-On, Hop-Off" buses we have seen in many other cities. I learned about several art galleries and things to see that I wish I had known about earlier as it was getting too late to see any more major attractions in Melbourne, more's the pity.

We had intended to visit the Victoria Market, a huge expanse of small shops and stalls under one continuous roof, but we finally arrived at 3:20 p.m. and they had already closed up for the day at 3:00 p.m. Drat! Don't make the same mistake we did; if you visit the market go between 6:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. while they are open! Putting "Plan B" into effect, we transferred over to the free City Circle trolleys and circled back to the library for one more session of free Internet. I sent off the pictures of the bell birds to Lyn and Neville while Monika investigated places to stay in Brisbane.

Wandering back to our hotel, we turned to the task of having dinner and then packing up to be on our way in the morning. The packing was gradually getting more difficult as we accumulated more and more souvenirs, somewhat in the gradual but inescapable manner that sailing ships in the old days accumulated barnacles during their years at sea. But once that was done we settled in for a calm, restful night and an early bedtime, knowing that we had to be up early the next morning to catch our train to Canberra.

Copyright 2009 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Australian Walkabout Epilog

May 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31
June 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30

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