Wrapping Up Melbourne With A Little More Culture–Oct. 5

This is my final day to explore Melbourne and so I decided on a little more culture.  First off was the Melbourne Museum.  The admission was $10 but I received a $10 senior discount.  The museum is a modern one and I was a bit surprised at how museums have changed.  The ones I remembered were these huge, quiet mausoleums full of items of antiquity.  This museum had some of these items but for the most part it had videos and interactive, computerized displays with children shouting and laughing.  There was even a 3D surround screen showing how the earth evolved.  Also surprising were the graphic displays of reproduction and human anatomy (bringing lots of exclamations of “gross” and “eewhew” from the kids).  The times they are a-changing. 

Next off was a tour of the State Library.  This was a huge, old, magnificent structure.  Inside was a circular rotunda with the seating arranged like spokes from the center podium.  It had 6 levels and topped with a glass dome.  Besides the books and other literature like a library should have, it actually had areas more like the museums I remembered.  Except here the items were almost all 2 dimensional – books showing the evolution from hand manuscripts to recent novels, historical drawings, exploration accounts, small and huge paintings, and photographs.  It was all very interesting and I could have spent the whole day there looking in more detail.  Especially interesting was a quote about exploring from T.S. Eliot that I included in the photos.

I had a little more time in the afternoon so I went to the adjoining Treasury and Fitzroy Gardens.  There was a Conservatory filled with colorful, fragrant flowers.  There were also ponds with ducks and more flowers – all very enjoyable to see.  On the way back to the hotel there were several more sightings of wedding photography.

Got back to the hotel and did my laundry and packed for the flight to Tasmania in the morning.