May 11 -- Exploring Melbourne

Original Victoria Parliament Building, originally and later used
as an Exhibition Hall, the largest building in Australia at
the time.

 We took a bus/walking tour around the city today, exploring history, nature, food, and markets. After a quick stop at the Royal Exhibition Hall to look at the architecture, we headed to the Melbourne Gaol and got a tour of one wing of the facility. This was only a small part of the whole complex, and was another place, like the Port Arthur Separate Prison, where solitary confinement was considered to be a good way to bring a man to reflect on his failings and change his ways. This was actually based on Quaker philosophies, but did not translate well to actual prison life. The cells here were even smaller than in Port Arthur, and inmates could be equipped with leather 'gloves' (circular hand enclosures with no finger or thumb holes) to prevent 'self abuse' (aka masturbation). If you were really bad, you were placed in a cell partly below ground that had no light available at all --- total sensory deprivation.

Tools to restrict and punish prisoners.

Plaster casts were made of executed prisoner's head to further
the study of phrenology.

The youngest inmate was 3 years old, sentenced for essentially being a bad, unsupervised toddler. His father went to the gold fields, mother followed and left the 3 year old in the care of his 10 year old sister. He got a 6 month sentence, but got one month off for good behavior. Many of those incarcerated were trying to stem the tide of poverty that was roaring through their lives.

The solitary cell block, three tiers.

The most famous resident was Ned Kelly. His father had been a convict, and he grew up poor. He was quite a likeable fellow, and when his gang robbed banks, a favorite ploy was to burn all the mortgage papers in the bank, making him a huge favorite of the under trodden. He took to wearing armor made out of plowshares that weighed about 100 pounds. He had the equivalent of a bucket with an eye slot on his head, shielding around his torso and down to about mid-thigh and along his upper arms. This limited his ability to shoot a rifle well or to run away. When he and his gang were finally cornered, the cops realized that bullets were bouncing off his chest and head, so they aimed for his arms and legs, and he collapsed with 27 bullets in him. He was in the hospital for 2 months til he was healthy enough to try and hang. When he was sentenced, he told the judge that he would see him where he was going soon, and the judge actually died within 2 weeks of the trial due to an infection in a boil on his neck caused by the rubbing of his horse-hair wig.

Inside of a solitary cell with sample prisoner

Next, we rode around and looked at several sports stadiums and saw an 'aussie rules football team' practicing -- this is a variation on rugby. We got out an walked around at the Royal Botanical Gardens with a quick stop at the Shrine of Remembrance. Originally intended as a WWI memorial, it was expanded to include soldiers in all wars. Vic told us that the Aussies were true to the British leadership until they realized in WWI that they were being used as cannon fodder, and they switched their military alliance to the US.

Shrine of Remembrance

Topiary at one entrance gate

The Botanical Gardens were beautiful and definitely merit another, longer visit. Our next stop was the St Kilda area at the port for lunch. Vic touted the pastries, and we set out to see what we could find. We actually decided on dim sum for lunch (which they called yum cha) and picked up an eclair and a huge strawberry meringue for a later dessert. When we had them late in the afternoon, we discovered that the Belgians and French have nothing to fear from the Australian pastrie makers -- large portions, but under-tasty and over-priced. Meals, in general, here have been more expensive than we anticipated.

Magpie in the park

View across a pond at the Botanical Gardens

Pastries in the window look better than they taste.

Luna Park Entrance in St. Kilda district

Back at the hotel, several of us elected to walk to the Queen Victoria Markets. This was our only chance to see them because they don't operate on Monday and we leave Tuesday am. Unfortunately, traffic on this Mother's Day was horrendous, so we got back to the hotel about an hour later than planned, which only gave us about an hour at this large market. Vic showed us around the food area, and then we set off to see if we could find a small orange or shiny boomerang for Davin and an opal tiara for Dahlia. We were actually very successful on the boomerang front right away, but it appears that no one before Dahlia had considered opals for a tiara. We did have fun looking around and wished we had had all afternoon to explore instead of just an hour.

On the way back to the hotel, we detoured to Chinatown. San Francisco has nothing to worry about. Even the archway is weeny compared to ours, and the district only stretches two blocks. It was so bad, we gave up after a single block and went home to have dessert (another disappointment!)

Melbourne's Chinatown Gate

Half of Chinatown, Melbourne