While the cat's away, the ratties will play!

Andy has been at work for the last four days, leaving me to do my thing! Which has included the immigration museum, bank visits, Captain Cook’s house, Fitzroy gardens, shopping (both food and clothes) and lots and lots of walking. I have truly pounded the pavement. Not one tram this week.

Immigration museum (Wednesday)

The day predicted rain, so I planned to be inside as much as possible, my feet also hurt after foolishly wearing sandals (thongs here) for the first time on a long walk the previous day, so something close to the hotel was also in the plan.

On our initial arrival in Melbourne we had walked around town, and had come across the immigration museum but turned it down due to feeling rough, sleepy and in no position to read and digest information, therefore we gave it a rain check. So as the rain was coming, I decided to cash that cheque.

The rain held off until I was safely inside the museum, the ticket price was a reasonable $8 for access to the 1^st and 2^nd floors, the ground floor (shop and cafe) were free.

Now... the bigger the coin the higher the value, except with Australian dollar coins, remember this when paying for your ticket, otherwise you will become unstuck, a bit like I did. However this was easily resolved and I passed up the stone staircase to the first floor where I was greeted by a short video.

The museum follows a simple route which you find in the map you are given with the ticket. I was interested to read the timeline around the second room, telling you of immigration numbers and policy from the 1800’s to now. In the centre of the room were several personal stories of different immigrants and their journey and life in Australia.

The third room is the best, and for two important reasons which I will come to later. When you enter this room you have to head straight ahead and this resulted with me entering a boat. The boat is awesome, the insides change through the ages as you walk on, showing you what it would have been like to immigrate and travel to Australia in different times.

One awesome thing is the toilet shown in the boat, only because they play a soundtrack of people using it! Hilarious!

Also around the outside are portholes containing animals which have intentionally and unintentionally immigrated to Australia and for some reason the rats are shown as travellers on the boat in little outfits, doing activities! Also hilarious!

The museum continues with information about specific policy decisions over immigration, with a multiple choice video were you have to choose if the person is accepted or rejected for a visa – I failed this as I would have accepted them, I am really quite soft.

Upstairs was a display about West Africa, which was interesting and I had the opportunity to do some stamping (paper and ink stamping, not feet). All in all it was worth the money, very educational and a good ratio of things to read and do. It gets 4 Stacey Stars*.

*Stacey Stars have only just been invented, hold on for more details.