Melbourne, Tuesday

This was our last day in Melbourne. We thanked our hosts and left. The girls decided to visit Melbourne University. It had been the only sunny day so far so I went to the Botanical Gardens instead. I must have been crazy because I had my Bandung suitcase with me. I dragged it around the garden. One hand on the handle, the other on a map and the camera. The garden looked so much better than it was a few days ago, when it was cloudy and miserably cold. I stopped to look around me (and to catch my breath, the footpaths were not suitcase-wheel friendly) and thought of a friend who also love trees and plants in general, and a few minutes later she called me!





From the gardens I went to Melbourne Museum to meet the girls. I thought history repeated itself when we got to the counter and saw a children everywhere (a few months ago I went to Sea World Jakarta and found the place crawling with children. It turned out there was a Jakarta-wide competition for kindergarten students. I think me and my friends were quite traumatised by the experience). It was a huge relieve to find the parents were there with the children, and everybody was well-behaved. It was an even bigger relieve to find out that there was a dinosaurus exhibition and that was where most of those kids were heading. We left out suitcases at the bag counter and started to look around. In one section of the museum there was a Body and Mind exhibition. No photos should be taken in this section. First, there was a plaster cast of the remains of two girls from Pompeii. This is how they got the cast. When the volcano erupted, the moist dust encased the bodies of people who died. This moist dust hardened like a shell around the body. The body withered away but the shell remained intact. When archeologist found these empty shells they filled the shells with plaster. When the plaster dried, we got the statue like shapes.
Going back to why no photos should be taken, there were big posters on naked people of many ages and races. There were life-like statues of naked people too. They weren't in provocative poses so it was't pornographic. Then there was a section of disection. Body tissue, brain, internal organs, bones, ... began to feel queezy so I went out. I don't know how people could hang around in there. Those things came from PEOPLE, people!!! I took a photo of a dinosaurus' skeleton instead.