We did our first real Skype with Kate, Jake & the kids. It was fun seeing Adrian & Tonight we went to see the Penquin Parade. Every day the Little Penquins, just 13" high, go out to sea to eat and every evening at dusk, they come back to their nests. That's the parade. It's quite an operation. There's a long boardwalk over the penquin burrows to the beach where there are bleachers set up. And there were lights on the beach itself. Tonight the crowd was small, about 800, compared to the 3,000 maximum. So we all waited till dark. A little before 8 one little penquin waddled out of the water and went quickly across the sand to the areas where the burrows were. Several minutes later a little group of penquins gathered at the edge of the water, started across the beach, got scared and ran back into the sea. They got back together again. Waited for more penquins to join them and them scooted to the burrows. This happened again and again at several spots along the beach. After about 50 minutes we walked back up the boardwalk and there were so many penquins there. We could see babies that had come out of the burrows to meet the parents and get food from them and we could see the groups of well fed penquins waddling up to the burrows. Who knew there were penquins in Australia? in their green St Patrick's Day shirts. Funny thinking it was Sunday there and Monday here.
Then we headed downtown. We take a tram in, electric street car, and it takes 45 min. or so depending on the number of stops it makes.
Monday, most museums are closed, so we went found some that were open and walked around a couple of parks.
We went into St Patrick's Cathedral, Catholic, a big, beautiful old church. Nearby was the City Museum in the former Treasury Building. There were gold vaults in the basement to hold all of the gold that was found in the gold rush of the 1850's and a display that told about the gold rush. Over 6 million ounces of gold were found and that made Melbourne the richest city in the world at the time.
Then we walked around the Treasury Garden to see a memorial to John F Kennedy. In the Fitzroy Garden there was Cook's Cottage. It was originally owned by Captain James Cook's family in England. In the 1930's it was dismantled and shipped to Melbourne and set up in the garden. Down the path from that was the Scarred Tree. Ancient Aborigines had removed the bark from the tree to make a canoe. Now all that remains is the trunk of the tree.
We joined a tour of the Victorian Parliament House. It was built from 1851 to 1890 and because of the wealth of the new state, it is grand. The predominant color of the lower house is green and it is arranged like the federal parliament. The upper house is crimson. On the ceilings, walls, just about everywhere, was gold leaf and it was beautiful. The house sits tomorrow, so there were preparations for it going on, sound checks on microphones, cleaning and so on.
Chinatown was close, so we walked down the streets of restaurants and shops and found the Museum of Chinese Australian History. It was well done. It started in the basement, telling the story of the Chinese who came over for the gold rush, stepping onto a 'moving' ship, then down into a gold mine. There were displays of stores, temples, Chinese opera, the things the immigrants would have experienced. From there we followed the dragon tail up to the ground floor.
It was the largest processional dragon in the world. It takes 8 people to move the head and 100 for the immense tail. There was a display of processional dragons. Amazingly, when the Chinese wanted to build a dragon in the 1950's, they went to Foshan in China. They found the nephew of the last dragon maker, but no one knew how to make a dragon, because of the Chinese Revolution. So the Melbournians gave them pictures and specifications and the Chinese built one of bamboo, silk, and wire. That restarted the dragon industry in China.
The upper floor had artifacts from the Chinese in Australia later. There were costumes, tools, store fronts, Chinese inventions (noodles, chop sticks, the abacus, a replica of a seismograph). The 2nd floor dealt with contemporary Chinese and Asian immigrants and their stories.
The Greek section of Melbourne was very near, so we stopped for lunch. Samson had a focaccia with eggplant, red pepper and feta. I had fried cheese (it started with an x, but I hadn't heard of it before), lettuce, tomato, cucumber and hummus on pita with Greek coffee. Good choices.
We walked to the State Library. A magnificent building, with a central dome over the reading room. Around the dome were exhibit areas. There was one exhibit on significant books of all kinds. Old books; a page that predates the Gutenberg press, a folio of Shakespeare's work, John Knox's Bible, early printing of Chaucer. Art books that explored the limit of what book means. Books of early explorations, and on and on. Another exhibit covered Victoria, with a section on Ned Kelly that included a replica of his armor and a death mask.
It's a research library and also housed journals, media, databases, geneolgy.
It was getting late, so we wandered to St Francis Catholic Church. They were having mass, so we went in. We were surprised to find that the celebrant was Ken, our glider pilot, known here as Father Boynton. We were able to say hello to him briefly, before an evensong service for St Patrick.
Busy day, back to the camper and rest.
Pictures of Flinders Street Station, the dragon, reading room of the State Library
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