Immigration Museum, Koorie Cultural Centre, ACMI, and the Night Market

Phew -it's been a busy couple of days! Janet is off to visit Jen's school today, so I'm at home with a day to catch up on blogging, finish booking stuff for the next big trip, and to deal with the rest of the running around. Sometimes, I feel like a bit of a housewife, but that's ok. :-)

On Tuesday, Janet and I spent the morning dealing with household stuff like laundry and grocery shopping. Then after a quick lunch we headed downtown to check out the Immigration Museum, which I've been meaning to visit for a while. The museum is housed (appropriately!) in the old Customs House, which would have processed immigrants to Melbourne in the old days when most new people arrived by sea. It was a really interesting little museum. There were lots of displays containing the stories and artifacts of people who immigrated to the Melbourne area, from the 1850's all the way to present day. Some of the stories were sad, some were funny, and some were really touching.

What we found really interesting was learning about how Australia's immigration policies have changed over the years. For example, for many years, British people were preferred over all other immigrants. This was then broadened to people of European descent, as part of the "White Australia Policy". This policy was only repealed in 1975! I found this fascinating, because certainly in the big cities, Australia is just as cosmopolitan and multicultural as Canada. But it's been quite the long journey for the country to be able to embrace multiculturalism.

The other dispaly which we quite enjoyed was a room set up like an immigration interview room. We would sit at a desk and play the role of an immigration officer, trying to decide whether or not to let someone into the country. Opposite the desk was a TV monitor and it would play the interview with an applicant. So you would sit there and listen to "your" conversation (piped in from speakers right beside you), and the applicant's responses (as shown on the TV screen). Once the questions were over, you had to make a decision whether or not to let the person in. once you'd made your selection, the rest of the interview would play and you would discover whether or not you'd made the "appropriate" decision. So yes, a very thought-provoking museum!

Yesterday dawned grey and rainy, and so Janet and I were forced once again to find an inside venue to explore. Janet seemed to find this quite funny - for the first two days of her tour, we looked for indoor spaces to escape the heat, and now we were escaping the rain! Anyway. First we ended up at the Koorie Cultural Centre, another place I've been meaning to visit. Unlike the Aboriginal cultural centre Jen and I visited in Adelaide, this place focused much more on the history of the Korrie peoples and the struggles they've faced since European invasion. The centre in Adelaide taught about Aboriginal traditions and had an excellent art gallery, but nothing on current issues. All in all I liked the Koorie centre here in Melbourne better. I spent entirely too much money in the gift store - I found my Dad his (rather late) Christmas present, and also a beautiful book for me.

Janet and I had a few hours to kill before heading out to the 'burbs for trampolining, so we got back on the City Circle tram and rode it pretty much the whole way 'round, listening to the recorded commentary as we went. We got off at Federation Square and checked out the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. They were unfortunately between major displays (a cool exhibit on the history of video games is opening in March!), but we had some fun in the "Imagination Space", where we sat and watched random videos made by ordinary people from all over Victoria, documenting their everyday lives. Some of them were really good, and some of them were, well, strange. But it sure felt good to sit down and (let's be honest) close our eyes for a little bit, and if we absorbed some culture along the way, well, so be it!

Janet and I caught the bus out to trampolining, where we met up with Jen. Now that Jen's teaching full-time, it makes more sense for her to go straight to trampolining from her school rather than come all the way back into the city to meet me. I was glad to have Janet as company... that's a looooong bus ride to do on my own! Our class was shorter last night than usual - Mark (our coach) had agreed to take us to the Night Market afterwards, and in order to get there we needed to leave early. The trade-off for this was that he worked us extra hard the whole night! It was worth it though. Janet even got up on the trampoline for a bit!

We escaped the trampoline torture around 8:30 and headed back downtown to the Night Market. It was just as fun as the last time we'd gone, just before Christmas, although there were definitely fewer people there. Janet, Mark and I enjoyed roo burgers, Jen had a panzerotti. We all wandered around and enjoyed the sights, smells, and music. Then Mark was kind enough to drive us home - which was great, 'cause we were all pretty tired at that point!