Exploring Melbourne

Melbourne is a wonderful city, filled with an interesting mix of old and new architecture, lovely parks and green spaces, and a transit system that is initially confusing yet curiously effective. We got up this morning and rode the train from the suburb of Kooyoung, where we are staying, into the Flinders Street station and began a long walk east to the Fitzroy Gardens, a park that was established in the 1860s.

It was spotless, with lots of busy caretakers to make sure it stayed that way. Among the sites along its shady lanes were a pavillion green house filled with the most beautiful array of flowers, the reconstructed cottage of Captain Cook’s parents brought over from England, and a “fairy tree” which has long since died but still bears the intricate carvings created in the 1930s of little people, koalas, and kangaroos.

Exiting the park we embarked on a fruitless quest for some second hand stores a guidebook had told us would be in an adjacent neighborhood of the same name. It was not an entirely wasted trip because we saw some pretty old buildings along the way that are reminiscent of the architectural style you would see in the French Quarter of New Orleans and a giant, somewhat grim looking St. Patrick’s Cathedral which rivaled many we saw in Paris.

Turning back to the core of the city, we made our way first to the Melbourne Museum, but we decided against going in to view the eclectic mixture of natural history and human history exhibits. The Royal Exhibition building in front of the museum was impressive, with a giant dome and a polished wooden floor that we admired from the doorway. Both are situated in another lovely park that a sign proclaimed had been designated as a world heritage site. It was not entirely without fault, however, since the flies were particularly nettlesome along this stretch that required us to continually employ the “Australian Wave” to keep them at bay. (I can see why the popular image of the old-time swagman with corks dangling from his hat brim came to be.)

At last we found ourselves at the State Library of Victoria, and we quickly made our way to the fifth floor to view the treasures they had on display. An incredible collection of documents, photographs, and artifacts told the story of Melbourne and Victoria’s

history from aboriginal times, to the first white contact, and finally to the modern date. We saw a portion of the flag flown by the rebelling miners at Ballarat’s Eureka Stockade, a diary of an active young woman from the 1890s who detailed her daily life in the city, and of course, Ned Kelly’s armor! As impressive as that display may have been, I was completely aghast to see Ned’s Jeriderie manifesto on display as well, done in his own hand (well, done in Joe Byrne’s hand, but at least Ned dictated it). I really liked the text from page they chose to highlight in the display case. Ned was certainly no Shakespeare:

...is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also who was has no alternative only to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly fat necked wombat headed big bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splawfooted sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police...

While we were looking at the Kelly display the library’s manuscript curators came to do some maintenance and we had a nice chat, international colleague to colleague. We also viewed the library’s main reading room from the balcony, which allowed us to see people deeply engaged in reading and study with nary a house computer in sight. Such is life.