Excursions

I haven't kept up with all the places we've been and all the things we've seen.

Several weeks ago -- mid January, in fact, extrapolating from the date on the photos -- Tim and Jonathan made a trip to Melbourne's Science Works museum on a weekday afternoon.  This was before Jonathan's school had started.  The following weekend, they took me.  The museum was interesting and enjoyable.  The highlight was a lightning show, involving lots of electricity.  We took a couple of pictures from their exhibit on the science of carnivals.  Here is one where Jonathan's head was chopped and resting on a platter.

And here is my face merged with Tim's.  Kind of.  It was cooler if you were there.  Kind of.

Out in the back you could tour through an old pump factory, where they used to pump all the sewage from the city of Melbourne off to a treatment plant somewhere farther away.  They haven't used the pumps for decades, I believe.  Visiting reminded me a lot, though, of visiting my dad's work place back when I was a kid.  Pumps all smell the same -- that rubbed steel kind of smell.

That's all I have to say on the Science Works. 

A couple of weeks ago, we spent a couple of hours on a Saturday at the National Gallery of Victoria, which is a major art museum up the road from us -- the oldest public art museum in all of Australia, in fact, says Wikipedia.  Jonathan and Tim are not that excited about the visual arts, and so visiting it was a low priority.  But when we were looking for something to do on a hot day, and remembered all the fountains around the building -- and then finally realized there was no entrance fee -- why not try it out?  Here's a photo of one of those fountains.

You enter the museum by walking past a huge glass wall with water flowing down its side.  Jonathan put his hand against the wall with some other children and let the water flow around him.  That was a highlight. 

Inside, there were a couple of ping pong tables set up near the cafeteria, with table tops designed by artists.  Playing ping pong was another highlight.  And the art we saw, from a rotating, modern collection, was kind of interesting, kind of funny, or kind of boring depending on the piece. Standard art museum stuff.  And that's all I have to say (for now) about the National Gallery of Victoria.  But surely we will have to go again to see more. 

We haven't really gone far from Melbourne, in spite of the fact that we've been here for about six weeks.  Last weekend, we took a train as far as we've been yet, out to a town called Werribee to the west.  I think Werribee is still classified as a suburb of Melbourne.  It was only a 40 minute train ride from the city center.  But the train did go through a couple of fields in addition to high rise buildings and houses.  It seemed far.

On the edge of Werribee is a zoo, this one with a safari ride, where you drive around in a huge bus-thing and watch the zebras and giraffes and a couple of rhinos in their large enclosure, like a safari.  Here's a picture of Jonathan with the giraffes.

They also had an Australian enclosure, with a couple of kangaroos and emus.  The kangaroos were out, but we only saw one emu hiding in the distance. 

Actually, Tim and I thought that the native animals were much more interesting than the zoo animals.  Out past the Australian enclosure was a river walk.  Tim had his Australian birds and animals app in his back pocket, and he identified the native birds hanging around the watering holes as we walked along.  And it was fun!  We saw a couple of Australian little birds:  a willie wagtail and a superb fairy wren. 

Who wouldn't want to spot a willie wagtail in the wild?  Or a fairy wren?  Just those names alone make you want to search them out. 

We also saw our first cockatoos in the wild.  In the park outside the zoo, there were a few gray cockatoos with pink heads and a pink crest, just digging in the dry dirt under a tree.  From Tim's app, we believe they were called gang gang cockatoos.  It's kind of strange to see these birds that are pets elsewhere just doing their thing in the wild.  And their thing seems to be digging in the dirt. 

As for our family, our thing is to go on excursions.  We have a couple more planned with other people, for this weekend and next.  Ooo!  Stay tuned for more exciting adventures!