Day 152: 1/6/13
I went to Peter Pan's this morning to pay the rest of the money I owed for the east coast trip. I had 799 left to pay, practically my whole pay slip!! She finalised the details with me and took the money, but she won't have them booked until tomorrow. So I'll have to go back tomorrow to get all the tickets and stuff.
I met Laura at 12 then at the museum. The were about five different sections to go and they were all huge! The first section was the Science and Life section which had rocks, jewels, fossils, dinosaur skeletons, bugs, butterflies and a whole room of stuffed animals. There was a 3-D room where you could see how the earth was formed and how earthquakes and volcanoes happen. I the dinosaur section there was some fossilised dinosaur poo which was lovely!! The room of stuffed animals seemed to have every animal under the sun- there must have been two hundred of hen anyway- it was like they were all looking at ya!!
The next section was the Forest section which really was a river and some trees and it went outside. There were some turtles and fish in the river but there didn't seem to be too much else. There was a little bit of aboriginal art then in the next section but most of it was closed for refurbishment. The aboriginal section would have been interesting!
Upstairs there was a whole section about life in Melbourne. There was a little, old cinema showing images from the 1920's era. They had old ads and music records displayed and a model of an old house in the slums. There was a model of some shops aswell. There were also some gold mining equipment as Melbourne was built in the goldrush. Most of the main buildings- the stations and parliament buildings, etc are from the goldrush era, beginning in the 1850's. In that section aswell they had the horse Phar Lap. The horse won 36 races and is the most successful horse in Australia. When he died they got taxidermists from New York to stuff him and now he stands in the museum. It's pretty freaky! There was footage of some of his races and all his gear and stuff too. This horse won 36 of 51 races around the 1930's. I'd say Black Caviar will get a place in the museum whenever he dies, winning 25 of 25 I think.
The last section of the museum was mind and body. The mind section was showing the brain and how it works and had information on mental illnesses and treatments people receive in asylums in Victoria. By the time we came to the body section we were pretty bombarded with information. There were some skeletons and information about how the body worked. We just went through that area quickly.
We were about 4 hours in the museum altogether, but you could easily spend another 4 hours there. There's an exhibition on tour there aswell at the moment of treasures from Afghanistan but we didn't even bother going to that one!
Afte the museum we went to the Little Creatures bar for food. I hadnt been there before. It's like a warehouse really with a big kitchen out the back and tables and people everywhere! Everywhere in Melbourne is very unusual and different- all a bit out there! But good!! After that we went to a bad called Naked for Satan- interesting name!! They had a rooftop bar so we drank up there looking out over the skyline and the traffic. Every pub here has different beers and speciality beers so whatever you drink in one pub, the next one won't have the same one! It's really annoying! At least they all have beer anyway. The next bar down the road was a Chinese restaurant and bar so there were little lanterns all over the place, it was nice.
We decided to go to Windsor then to meet Jamie who had had to work today. We went to a pub called Wold and I. They had a wolf in the corner dressed up- as you do!! Laura and I got hungry then as we had only had a light lunch earlier in the day. So we went to another bar which did food aswell. That was a Russian sort of a bar with lots of vodka, but they had some beer too. Laura went home after that and I got a taxi into town. Most of the day we spent talking about Laura going home on Tuesday, teaching over here, packing for travelling, teaching at home... The usual stuff!