Today we focused on museums. On the way to our first we encountered this statue. Here is Beth with a statue of Queen Victoria. Why, yes, it is still raining.
The Barracks Museum. This was a barracks for the prisoners early on, but after the end of exportation of prisoners from Britain it became a women's asylum and then government offices, and finally a museum.
Replica of the ratacombs found under the barracks when a restoration of the building was done. The rats had excavated these tunnels and ran between the floors.
A treadmill used to punish prisoners. No need for stairmasters back then, and all that work created power to run mills.
Here is an example of what was found between the floor boards. Over the years rats have pulled materials into the space between the floor boards. The rats helped preserve a lot of the history of the barracks.
Beth relaxing in the barracks hammocks.
A view of the dormitory room through the peephole.
The Australian Museum. It was a nice museum, but I liked the South Australia Museum in Adelaide better. The SA Museum's display of aboriginal art seemed better as did their displayed natural history sections. The AM had more on rocks and digging up rocks, but come on they're just rocks.
A reconstruction of one largest predatory marsupials from 8 million years ago. It was the size of a rottweiler and twice as large as its relative the Tasmanian tiger that went extinction in the 1930's.
A contemporary aboriginal painting that uses traditional techniques and colors. This contains representations of common "bush tucker" animals goannas (monitor lizards), snakes, emus, and honey ants.
An interesting display showing how the human skeleton works.
They had an entire floor devoted to mining and minerals. Here is one the many displays.
A pretty rock, but despite an interesting and comprehensive online database of the collection from which this came, I can't figure out what this is.
Me with a reconstruction of Diprotodon, the largest marsupial known to have lived. If you want to see it's skeleton let me know I have photo from the South Australian Museum that shows the skeleton. It had very large rodent like incisors.
Young fresh-water crocodiles. Compared to the salt-water crocodile, these are pussy cats (see earlier from the aquarium).
Hyde Park (yes, like London) in the center of the city. There was a collection photographs of people (the banners between the lampposts) lining in the walk.
An Australian white ibis. They were common through out the city.
A crocodile pie. Australians show their British heritage by the abundance of meat pies and sausage rolls. It was pretty tasty.
