Soapbox

Yesterday, I visited the immigration museum. This in itself could merit a fine, if somewhat trite, blog post, because the museum is well put together, pleasingly designed and just plain interesting. It also had stuffed blackbirds in dickie bows:

You can't see it, but the sign pronounces that they're singing 'bye bye, blackbird', which is just the kind of inane detail I love in a museum. This was part of an exhibit about all the animals which were exported to Australia and also included artful arrangements of cockroaches:

The first one to say the guy in the reflection is a cockroach is a dead man,

 And rats:

It just needs Rik as a judge.

All of which is very charming and makes for a nice, if somewhat trite, anecdote. However, the main reason I wanted to talk about the immigration museum was because of the context in which I saw it: I had just read in The Age that Julia Gillard was going to continue to allow employers to discriminate against people because of their sexuality and that she had previously declared that she wouldn't be implementing marriage equality.
And then I came across this display:

Which is about one of Australia's first mixed marriages in Australia between a greek immigrant and an aboriginal woman. The sign talked about the difficulties they faced as a mixed-ethnicity couple but then concluded that this was no longer an issue, and that the term 'mixed marriage' isn't even used anymore because Australia's just so damn progressive when it comes to love.

Ahem.

And then there was this display: 

Which touches on Jewish immigrants, and says how they weren't really accepted until the holocaust made people realise that anti-semitism isn't cool. There were other minority groups exterminated in the concentration camps, you know.
And then the entire second floor was dedicated to diversity and how great it is. In the interest of fairness, there was one instance of the word 'queer', thrown in amongst a bunch of other slurs which we were told can cause offence.

As I said, the museum was engaging and well-designed; I just wasn't feeling it. I don't know if I'll come back to Australia in my later life, but I certainly wouldn't consider moving here until some serious progress is made vis-a-vis equality. However, if that progress is ever made, I should have no problem coming back, because the museum included a replica of the Australian citizenry test, and I passed with flying colours.

Also of note: this is the only museum to have ever made me feel sea sick.

They took all the condors and put em in a condor museum

My word, I haven't updated you in a long time; I'm sure you're all clamouring to find out what I've been doing during spring break (woo! Spring break!). Don't worry, I have a good excuse for this catastrophic lack of updates. I was building a house.

Travis, eat your heart out.

As you can see, construction was complex, arduous and colourful. But my god, it was worth it. Jason just built some stupid robot of which no photographic evidence exists whatsoever- it was sadly destroyed when my house collapsed. Because I pelted it with bricks until it fell apart. Good times.

These pictures were taken at the Melbourne Museum, which was a mix of nearly all the museums I've ever visited, with the exception of the museum of torture: it had art, it had skeletons, it had condors (more condors than necessary, if you ask me); there was even a space for nap time!
It was divided into two floors- on the bottom floor, there were all the animals (it was the first museum I've seen which contained live animals- it had ants, flies and (shudder) redback spiders)- this was where we spent the majority of our time, especially in a Noah's ark type room with literally hundreds of specimens judging you from their plinths (pictures below). The second was split between an exhibition on the mind, themed like a labyrinth, with chambers that simulated dreams and pods where people ranted at you about how they're special, which I found interesting but have no pictures of, because my battery ran out, and one on puberty which Jason didn't let me see because he wanted to visit the giftshop- now I'll never know what happened to Peter, Jane and their rapidly changing bodies.

It really was a lot of fun- I got to see whales

It was skinless when I found it. Honest.

and dinosaurs

and bugs

and a tonne of taxidermied critters

Look, birds! Nowhere else I can see them, nosiree. 

It really was a lot of fun, and I didn't even see it all. I got in for free too, which was the icing on the cake.

I also got to see The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX, which I guess was the marzipan figurine on the cake. It's awesome in IMAX, but it does make some glaring continuity errors more noticeable, namely who's driving the truck. But well worth the money to see it again, only this time seven storeys high. The Melbourne Museum actually has the world's 3rd largest screen- the second largest is in Sydney, where I'm going next week (squee!), but I probably won't check it out. Alack.