Day 17 Thursday and back to touristing

I've gone off planning. For Melbourne the approach has been to get on the tram, look through leaflets while I'm on the way into town and decide by the time I get there what I'll do! Today, the Melbourne Museum and the Royal Exhibition Building won, followed by the possibility of investigating the 'Docklands' area, a hip happening place apparently.

The Museum was good. There is a 'Forest Gallery' which is indoor/outdoor temperate forest complete with wildlife, including this Tawny Frogmouth owl.
It may be that I haven't been to a museum in the UK for a long time, but here, they make use of live exhibits as well as video and audio presentations, in addition to some curiously classical displays (think pretty arrangements of hugely nasty bugs for example).

At times, although not in this museum, you're rather bombarded by sound arriving simultaneously from several storyboards. I'm sure it's more appealing to the younger visitor than the stuffy old places of my youth. I'm not sure that the buzzing noises in the Bugs Alive section were necessary .... itch itch. All the museums have their section on indigenous peoples too. Today's was interesting. They are all terribly pc though. Ooh, no environmentally friendly house in this one. Although there was a good section on water. It seems that Australia's drought problem is not simply a problem with not enough water but also salt in the soil. Something to do with the geological history. So, as has come to be the way, I get chucked out at closing time.

It was too late for the Royal Exhibition Building, which had hordes of students waiting to do exams sat outside earlier. I was going to walk to 'Docklands' but my thongs were rubbing, so I caught the City Circle tram. The equivalent at home would be running the old style red double deckers around the City and West End (of London) for free, complete with slightly irritating recorded announcements. Unfortunately, the tram I caught was defective so I ended up walking part of the way after all.

I think 'Docklands' is aspirational at present. It has quite a few developments of harbourside [expensive] apartments in place along with upmarket eateries and bars. However, the promise of the 'best waterfront dining, events, activities and tours' seemed to be lacking most of the ingredients. There was the customary Melbourne collection of open-air artwork, which is one of the things I love about this place.


So now, I have one more day in town before getting back on the train for the next phase. We're meeting with Lauren, Paul's youngest daughter, for tea and an art exhibition by one of her uni friends. It'll be lovely to catch up with her. Lauren came to London with Paul in August 2004 and ended up living in Edinburgh for a while.

Oh, you can see it was lovely and sunny today :D