Australia: Melbourne Museum

If you have ever gone to a museum with me, you know how much I love them, especially ones with dinosaur bones and animals. Walking into Melbourne Museum was like being told I won free Coca-cola for a year. Now, to be fair, I haven't been to all that many huge American Museums, but it would take a lot to beat this place.

The first exhibit I saw was an indoor forest with live animals. It talked about fires, seasons (some aboriginals had up to seven), and some other environmental stuff that the frogs distracted me from.

^ Find the Skink! ^

The next exhibit I saw was on the human body. It was interesting, but I was disappointed that there weren't more real human bodies on display, which sounds much more morbid when written down.

There was one part of this exhibit that really I enjoyed. It was the mummy of Tjeby. The side of the coffin has eyes painted on it as it looking toward the rising sun in the East. Next to the mummy was a cast of the scull and a facial reconstruction from it.

This exhibit then morphed into another one about the way the brain works, identity, and metal illness. I had two favorite parts. The first was a full scale optical illusion room with windows that looked like mirrors, normal looking doors that were too small to go through, etc. There were a bunch of kids playing in the room, so I decided not to look like a creeper by taking pictures. The second favorite was a station that invited visitors to lay down and take a 3 minute nap. Who doesn't like a sleeping exhibit?

Sorry for the bluriness. The sign says something like "Please lie on a bench and enter the realm of sleep and dreams." Underneath the sign you can see a visitor's head as they are laying down for a nap.

When I entered into the museum, I did grab a map and guide. Did I look at them at all? Nope! I just wanted them for scrap booking. I figured that I would go through the entire museum anyway; might as well leave the contents of it a surprise. And, boy, was I surprised! Walking into the next exhibit, I could see nearly every animal I could imagine. They were taxidermied, but it was an amazing collection! I could spend days just going through everything I saw in this one exhibit!

^ If you can't read the Koala's story above, here is a summary. This is Sam. She is a famous koala because someone took a picture of a firefighter giving her a drink of water. She was brought to a wildlife center, healed from her burns, but had to be euthanized for Chlamydia. Yep, koalas get that apparently.

It was at this point that I entered the animal skeleton section!

Dear Auntie Bernadette, your fear of sharks is just silly! As the sign says, their teeth are just hardened cartilage and scales. What could that possibly do? :D

^ Platypus skeleton! ^

Next I came upon an underwater creatures exhibit. While I love some marine animals, ignorance is bliss for some others. I didn't take any pictures of the creepy stuff, other than sharks, of course.

What could make this any better? Dinosaurs!!!!!

And other weird animals of some sort that I didn't have enough time to fully investigate.

Next were the bug rooms. So many bugs. This isn't a fraction of them, but if gives you the point.

I particularly liked the following quotes.

After all of these exhibits, I came to the First People exhibit about aboriginals. I never realized how many groups and languages there were.

In this exhibit there were many objects created by different groups. I took pictures of the ones relating to animals, of course!

^ I partially want to pretend I took a picture of this because it's a great piece of art, which is is, but I also want to point out that there is a wallaby in the tree!

Then I finally found the reason I came to the museum in the first place, a kinetic wings and light sculpture that Samantha recommended I see. It was very beautiful! A story of creation played with the lights. I will attempt to load the videos of it.

There was an addition to this Aboriginal exhibit that featured children in orphanage systems of Australia. In the late 1930s it bacame law for the government to take any "half-caste" or mixed race aboriginal children away from their families to assimilate them into white society. I've seen a few documentaries on this before, but it was a sad exhibit. No pictures for it.

As I was leaving, I took a picture of the 3D National Symbol.