We stumbled on this museum completely by accident. We were in the middle of a mall in downtown Melbourne, looking for a Boost Juice (I think I've become addicted to their smoothies - but they're healthy so I'm not worrying about it). We came up to the top of an escalator to find this HUGE tower, inside the mall! It's completely enclosed by a glass tower, something like 20 stories tall. Intrigued, we went inside to find out what it was. Turns out this is a museum, showcasing the development of Melbourne's downtown over the last 150 years or so.The building itself is a shot tower. It was originally used to manufacture gun shot. Apparently the molten lead was carried up in a bucket to the top of the tower, then poured through a huge colandar-like device which spread the molten metal into separate streams, which then beaded into shot as they fell down the length of the tower. When the newly made shot reached the bottom of the tower, it was collected, run through a polishing machine to get rid of rough surfaces, then packaged up and sold. Who knew?
There were some cool displays inside the museum, but the one we liked the best was an interactive video that allowed you to manipulate images of present-day Melbourne and compare them to the same spot from the 1890's. For those of you who have access to my Facebook page, go check out the video that I posted.
Although it was an interesting side trip, the Shot Tower Museum was not the main purpose of the day. Jen and I have decided that we need board shorts so that the next time we go to the beach we can do so in appropriate Australian style. So we were really downtown to check out the department store Target, hoping to find board shorts there. And this led to another random side adventure - hat shopping!
Hats are a big deal here. HUGE. Ever since arriving in Melbourne we have been wandering in and out of shops, looking at fancy hats. The dollar stores carry them, so do all the hippest designer boutiques. The reason is simple - it is horse racing season, and any lady who's going out to the races needs to dress up real fancy, and that includes a fancy hat! For the last couple of weeks we had been hoping that we might somehow be able to get tickets to the Melbourne Cup, THE premiere horse race in Australia. Unfortunately it's all sold out, so no races for us. This hasn't stopped us from admiring all the fancy hats in the stores though!Well, I'm not quite sure what got into us this afternoon, but we were having way, way too much fun playing in the hat section in Target. I swear we tried on pretty much every fancy hat they had. And since I had my camera with me (as I always do these days), one thing led to another, and, well, I now have a new photo gallery on facebook full of hat shots! Some of the hats were just plain fancy, some were just plain ridiculous, and many were somewhere inbetween. But you can judge that for yourself. Come and check out my hat photogallery, and please leave us comments on the various styles. The question of the hour is, which hat should Jen wear if she were able to go to the Melbourne Cup? Your votes and comments are important, so have fun!
