Tim’s friends Marcus and Dawn joined us in the morning. But it was pouring rain. We looked back over the Itinerary. What could we do instead of the garden walk while it was raining?
Jonathan voted for the Justice and Police Museum, not far from the Famous Sydney Opera House. We could start there, and then pick up the original Itinerary when the rain stopped.
The Justice and Police Museum is in a historic building that once was a police station, and court house. In addition to letting you tour the old holding cells and charging rooms, the museum includes black and white photos from one of the largest collections of police photographs from the early 1900s. The photos were actually pretty interesting, although we didn't take any pictures. (Pictures of pictures? Who does that?) Some were gruesome, but most were benign. The museum also included a history of incarceration and punishment in Sydney. Seven hundred of the first settlers of Sydney were convicts from England. Most of the convicts became slave laborers. Repeat offenders were beaten, shipped to solitary islands, locked up….
After the police museum, it was time for lunch. And then to rejoin the Itinerary.
We walked back to the Circular Quay, and found a café that was suitable, just as it began pouring rain again. As we finished lunch, the rain was coming down harder than before.
Well, this didn’t look like good timing for the Royal Botanic Gardens, either. We consulted the map. The Museum of Sydney, housed on the foundations of the first government house, was only a couple of blocks away. While it rained, we could go there.
***
I would like to interrupt this post to complain about the Bureau of Meteorology. I bought an inexpensive plane ticket from Melbourne to Sydney, cutting costs by restricting myself to carry-on luggage only. As I checked in online, I was reminded that I only was allowed seven kilograms of luggage total. So I packed super light. And then, after packing super light, I weighed myself (what is a kilogram, anyway?) with and without my bags. And I was carrying about eight kilograms.
I read in the fine print that a laptop could be carried separately and wouldn’t count toward the weight limit. If I took my little tablet/laptop out of my bag, I was down to 7.5kg. So then I looked at my clothes, my notepad for work, my talk for the conference, swimsuit, rain jacket. I double checked the weather forecast. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which sounds like a respectable group, forecast temperatures in the 27’s all weeks, sunny, an occasional shower. That decided it. I would keep the swimsuit, and leave the rain jacket.
It rained all day Friday, aside from the two half hours when I was walking to and from the University of Sydney. So no problem. But now that it was raining heavily again on Sunday, it appeared there might be a problem.
***
In any case, two blocks weren’t far to go in the rain. We walked up the street to the Museum of Sydney, and explored the history of Sydney for a while. Here are some interesting Facts we learned.
(1). The Famous Harbour Bridge was completed in the 1930s.
(2). The Famous Sydney Opera House was completed in the 1970s.
(3). In the late 1800s, as more and more Asians were coming to Australia, something had to be done. Australia developed a “White Australia” policy, to exclude immigration by all but the beloved European races. Asians who wished to enter Australia needed to pass a dictation test, in which they must write correctly a sentence dictated to them in any European language of the choice of the examiner – typically in a language (not English) they believed would was most likely ensure failure. The White Australia Policy wasn’t repealed until the 1970s. Immigration problems and racism exist everywhere.
Anyway, Tim got bored first. He didn’t want to sit through the 1939 news reel showing pictures of the Famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. And so we left. Having taken only one picture, of some ship models.
Outside, it was raining harder than ever before. Jonathan pulled out his rain jacket. Tim pulled out his, rolled his eyes at me and reluctantly offered me the jacket. I politely declined, saying I would just go buy an umbrella. So we ran out into the rain, jacket-less, and stopped at the first convenience store we could find. Drenched. The cheap umbrella was twelve dollars. We bought two. And then the rain stopped.
By now the Royal Botanic Gardens were not really in the picture. And the state of the sky did not convince us that the rain had really stopped. So we hit the last museum on my list in the Central Business District, the Hyde Park Barracks.
The Hyde Park Barracks is a UNESCO world heritage site. It was built to house the convicts who came from England to Australia in the early 1800s. The convicts lived there for years, with rats under the floorboards and backed up toilets in the yard. Until the barracks became an immigration house. In the mid 1800s, young Irish girls, orphaned or impoverished by the Irish Potato Famine, were shipped to Australia to find work and husbands, in a land too full of single males. The top floor became an asylum for elderly women. The barracks housed old widows and women with dementia until their death. And then, by the turn of the 20th century, the building had been used for several years for various government purposes. It was saved and restored in the 1990s.
The bottom floor of the Barracks was set up to show history. The first room had the floor boards peeled back along the walls, to show what years of rats had done below. On the second floor, you could see a list of the things the Irish girls were allowed to take across the world with them. And a few rooms on the third floor were restored to show the sleeping quarters of the convicts: hundreds of hammocks strung so close together that there was no space for elbows. Our audio tour instructed us to climb in a hammock and see what it was like.
By now, three museums in, we were pretty tired of being on our feet. Outside, the rain was coming down in a huge downpour. We were happy to follow instructions and try out the hammocks. For a long time. A very long time. Except the museum was closing.
Five o’clock. Raining.
My Itinerary at this point – remember? The one I planned carefully back on Friday? Said we should be in Hyde Park – and we were. We should enjoy relaxing by the fountain and enjoy the greenery of the park.
Everyone relaxed? Enjoyed the greenery?
Check. We walked back into the city to eat another early dinner, then back on the train to the hotel and an early bedtime.
Feet? Ouch.
1 comment:
Ah, hammocks are always the most fun! They're surprisingly easy to sleep in too if you fancy a nap!
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