Melbourne Town Mothers Day 2011...............

Last weekend J and I headed off to Melbourne to visit the Tutankhamen Exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. Because this was the only facility to host the exhibition it was up to the visitors to make their way there.

I first read about it on the internet and applied to join a ballot of 2 million people who wanted to purchased tickets and of course, J and I were delighted when the tickets arrived a week or so later.

So last Friday we left work and drove home for a quick shower and to pick up a bag, then on to Sydney Domestic Terminal for the flight to Melbourne.
Now for those who have never visited Melbourne before it is a wonderful city, especially for public transport. They have not only trains, buses and taxis, they have trams as well and one simply hops on and off the tram whenever you wish to.

We left the hotel early Saturday morning to walk to Victoria markets. Like everywhere else in Australia Melbourne is currently experiencing Autumn and so the trees are all such beautiful colours.

A brisk walk through the gardens left me in awe of the gorgeous shrubs and trees and by the time we made our way through the gardens we had arrived at Victoria Markets.

By the time we finished there it was time to jump on a tram and head to Melbourne Museum. The Tutankhamen exhibition was well organized with entry times allotted to each visitor so as to avoid crowds pushing and shoving.

It centered around the life of the child king of Egypt some 3200 years ago. He became king at age 9 after his father died and remained king for ten years. Still today the cause of his death is a mystery.
His tomb was discovered intact in 1968. To view the artifacts on display, I was amazed at the detail and vibrancy of them.

Imagine how difficult and challenging it would have been to produce golden vases, rods and ornamental wears without electricity, every task performed by hand as there was no machinery and no formal education in trades.
Instead most workers were born into families who undertook the tasks of stone missionary , gold production and the creation of coloured paints, etc.

Generation after generation learned to perfect the tasks and trades within the Egyptian cities. A tomb fit for a king usually took a lifetime to build with the Emporer deciding what he wanted included in the tomb to take to the afterlife with him. The twist with Tutankhamen’s tomb was the he died such a young man that it is expected that his tomb was actually much smaller than the usual.
It was interesting to read that the use of modern DNA testing has been used to determine the cause of his death yet still scientists can not say what killed him.

He was mummified and buried according to his wishes and left no offspring to take his place. He was instead replaced by one of his elderly advisors.

In all, it was an excellent exhibition and left J and I planning a future trip to Egypt to visit the pyramids, the Valley of the Kings and even the Cairo Museum. It was worth the visit.

A friend had suggested to J and I to make time to visit Captain Cook’s cottage which is situated in the middle of the Botanicial Gardens in Melbourne. So after a quick breakfast on Sunday morning we hopped on a tram and headed off to Flinders Gardens.
The scenery was of course, lovely and we soon found the house. It was actually the childhood home of Captain James Cook and it was like stepping back in time.

The house had been dismantle d stone by stone and sold to a group of philanthropists who had it reassembled in the heart of the Botanical Gardens.
Even the front door mat was included in the purchase. It is made from flint stone and set into the cement at the front door.

Above the front door I could see the letters JGC and the year 1755. Apparently this was carved by Captain Cook’s father and merges the initials of Cook senior and his wife Grace, with 1755 the year in which the cottage was finished.

One has duck your head to enter each room as the doorways were low ( James Cook recorded as being 6’ 3” in his naval recods) for heating reasons back then and the staircase was quite narrow by our modern day standards.
The back yard was a working garden as in the 18th century families relied on home grown produce for their food supply. The gardens contained vegetables, fruit, herbs, flowers and medicinal plants. Of course chooks and pigs were maintained as part of the food supply as well.

It was very interesting to hear about scurvy grass. Scurvy is a disease caused by lack of vitamin C and was common amongst seafarers back in those days.

Cook prevented scurvy amongst his crew by including scurvy grass (a New Zealand spinach), sauerkraut and other fresh produce in their diet.

Now Melbourne is renowned for it’s intermittent rain and of course just as we finished looking around down came the rain so J and I hightailed it up to the main road to catch a tram uptown.

We stoped at St Paul’s Cathedral which I will blog about separately.
Before we knew it it was time for an early dinner and a flight back to Sydney.We are often surprised at how fast weekends away pass however, when the flight is but one hour long it gives you the opportunity to return again and again.We are heading back for some night photography in the city and we also want to visit the Mornington Penninsula as well.

I look forward to it.

Whilst in the sity I looked at so many of the tall buildings and realised that the rain clouds had desended down over their roofs.

J picked up on the tram routes very quickly and so public transport became easy.

The Intercontinental Hotel

I like to think of these two photos as modernity...the old and the new.