Week 27: Melbourne and Sydney

To finish our time in Australia, we visited Melbourne and had one more day in Sydney between flights. 

Our original plan for Melbourne included one day at the Melbourne Museum. However, we enjoyed it so much that we ended up spending Wednesday and Thursday afternoon there! The first exhibit we explored was all about history in the Melbourne area. Before moving into human history, we began with history of the area prior to human inhabitation. Our favorite part of this section was seeing some fossils and a rendering of what a diprotodon was thought to have looked like. Diprotodons are the largest marsupial ever thought to have existed, becoming extinct some 46,000 years ago. In the Aboriginal history area, we practiced how to make fire with a stick (no flames included), sorted items into different traditional containers, and learned more about the over 300 aboriginal languages and dialects. There was a very cool map where the girls could listen to how to say “hello” in the different dialects across the region. We also learned about traditional Aboriginal message sticks, and got to see the document “purchasing” the Melbourne area from the local Aboriginal tribe. It was very interesting to compare Aboriginal, Maori and Native American views on land not being own-able and how each of those communities lost their land when European settlers who believed in land ownership came to the area. To finish the Melbourne history section, there was a contemporary section where we learned about current Aboriginal issues and saw several stories of cultural revival from local Aboriginal descendants. We also explored a living forest exhibit, admired dinosaur fossils and pet a shingle-backed skink! The Melbourne museum was wonderful, and I’m sure we could have spent hours longer wandering through the exhibits we didn’t make it to! 

We spent Wednesday evening at the summer night market hosted at Queen Victoria Markets. There were street performers, bands and a huge number of food and shopping options. The market was packed with people from all over, and it was a ton of fun to explore. 

We spent Friday afternoon exploring Scienceworks, a local science museum. There were a few exhibits that we were unable to visit because of scheduling and the girl’s ages, but we loved the sections we were able to explore. The first room contained a giant model of the moon. We relaxed on the reclining chairs around the base of the model and observed the moon while listening to recordings from the moon landing. Next, we went to a section of the museum about technology and our society. We learned about how technology influences our lives, played with creating ideas for future technology, and learned about what we can do to make Earth a healthier place. The girls favorite part of this exhibit was the game where they could make their own eco friendly houses, sort garbage into trash, recycling and composting, and use their body to power different energy sources such as wind turbines and solar panels. The final exhibit we explored was all about the science of sports. The girls raced against olympic running times, participated in a virtual wheelchair races, and tested their physical abilities – such as how high they could jump and reaction time. Our favorite part of visiting so many science museums is that no two museums we have visited have had the same exhibits. Scienceworks was no exception! 

After relaxing on Saturday, I was excited to go explore more of Melbourne on Sunday. On my way across town, I ended up in one of the “street art legal” sections of town. There was some amazing street art, and I even saw a group of people getting a lesson on creating street art! I then took a bus tour to see more of the city, explored a local market at Federation Square, and enjoyed live music, a burger and beer at a restaurant in Federation Square called Beer Deluxe. 

We had our final inter-Australian travel day on Monday. By the time we made it to our airbnb, there wasn’t much time left in the afternoon. So, we found the nearest swimming pool and spent the remaining afternoon hours swimming and getting our travel day crazies out.

For our final day in Sydney, we did one of our favorite activities and visited the zoo. Sydney has multiple zoos. We chose to take the ferry across the harbor and visit Taronga Zoo Sydney. Taronga Zoo is located on a pretty serious hill. Luckily, they added a gondola to take visitors from the bottom of the hill to the entrance at the top. The views of the harbor from the gondola were fantastic, as were the views of the animals! Our big goal for the zoo was to watch the seal show, so that’s what we did first. Several different species were highlighted during the show, including Australian sea lions, Californian sea lions, and a New Zealand fur seal. The show was a pleasant mix of conservation information and showing how smart the seals by showing off a variety of behaviors. The next exhibit that was important to us to visit was the Sumatran tiger exhibit. One of the Sumatran tigers was sleeping just on the other side of one of the windows, so we got an amazing look at him. We also got to watch a video feed showing the three tiger cubs that were just born in January and their mother! We learned more about Sumatran tigers, including their conservation status, how they are tracked, and what we can do to help with conservation. Sumatran tigers are the most critically endangered of all tiger subspecies, with fewer than 350 left in the wild. The zoo focused on purchasing products that do not contain palm oil or that contain sustainably harvested palm oil as a way to help with Sumatran tiger conservation. They had a very cool shopping center at the end of the exhibit where Audrey and Maurene were able to email several companies asking some of them to switch to sustainable palm oil and thanking some for using sustainable palm oil.  We also were excited to visit the Australian animal exhibit. We loved seeing kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, echidnas, and koalas. However, the biggest hit was the platypus. We spent quite a while learning about the platypus and watching one swim around in his enclosure. This was the first time any of us had ever actually seen a platypus! To round out a wonderful day, Audrey found out that she was accepted to the school she applied to go to next year in Hawaii! She was so excited that she almost started crying, which was a wonderful experience to share.

Wednesday was a travel day, but our flight was not until the evening. Because of this, we were able to fit in a small excursion between packing and our flight. Our original plan was to visit the Australian Museum. On our way, we saw St. Mary’s Cathedral. Audrey and Maurene noticed that it shared a resemblance to Notre Dame and asked if we could go inside. The cathedral was open for visitors, so we enjoyed a little while exploring the church, comparing and contrasting St. Mary’s and Notre Dame, and learning more about Christianity and Catholicism. After our impromptu cathedral visit, we continued on to the Australian Museum. Our time in the Australian Museum was limited, but we enjoyed an exhibit about Aboriginal culture and an exhibit about Australian wildlife. We learned that the ancestors of aboriginal people are thought to have arrived in Australia some 50,000-30,000 years ago, making them the oldest known civilization on Earth. There was also a very cool map where we could see where the Aboriginal tribes lived across Australia based on language and dialects. We enjoyed the museum up until the minute it closed, and then headed for the airport for our flight back to Hawaii.

Things I’ve learned in Australia: 

1. Australia is huge – it’s almost as big as the United States. Even with both cities on the East coast, the drive from Cairns to Melbourne is 32 hours. Thank goodness we flew!
2. There are actually crocodile and kangaroo crossing signs. I don’t know why I found this so entertaining, but it was awesome.
3. Sydney is a huge city. It took us an hour each way to get to and from the CBD from our airbnb in the suburbs, and we were nowhere near the end of the metro line.
4. There are more Starbucks in Australia than there were in New Zealand, but not nearly as many as many American cities.
5. Six out of the seven sea turtle species and ten percent of the world’s fish species are found on the Great Barrier Reef.
6. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living organism on Earth, and can be seen from  space.
7. Freshwater crocodiles aren’t known to be nearly as aggressive as saltwater crocodiles. Australia has both.
8. Aboriginal people are thought to be the oldest civilization on Earth.
9. The stadium in Melbourne was renamed Marvel Stadium in an agreement with Disney.
10. Melbourne is home to Australia’s first traffic light.
11. Street art is legal in some parts of Melbourne.
12. The British established use of Australia as a penal colony in 1788. Convicts were sent to Australia from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales until 1868. Around 20% of current Australian citizens are descended from these convicts.
13. Several restaurants had burgers made from either kangaroo or crocodile meat. I never did see a local order one, so I think maybe this is a tourist meal, but it was indeed on the menu.
14. Not all states in Australia use daylight savings time. During our stay, Sydney and Melbourne were observing daylight savings time, while Cairns was not. During the winter all three cities are on the same time.
15. The Central Standard time zone in Australia is set 30 minutes off of the nearby Eastern Standard time zone rather than the traditional hour.
16. Microbreweries are a big thing in Australia!

Next stop: Hawaii!