Back up to Town.

Another few days in Melbourne, a couple of shows to see, and a look at some museums that we hadn't seen last week.
But first we attended the Melbourne Rotary club, the first in Australia chartered 1921, and still a very big and active club. A lunchtime club, there are about 260 members, and with guests there were around 150 attending this meeting, which is held in the iconic Windsor Hotel, opposite Victoria's parliament.

Today's speaker was the Lord Mayor, he spoke about security, crime and cleaning up the city. Many of the problems here are the same the world over, but he has some good ideas, including having a flower seller on the Town Hall steps until 3AM so that men could take something home with them, and opening exhibitions and other attractions until late at night to take the accent off late night drinking. Also, he removes graffiti as soon as it appears, and that appears to be successful in reducing it, although we still see a lot on the train routes.





In the evening we took in a show called Last Man Standing, a musical about the life of Jerry Lee Lewis. Many old songs from the fifties and sixties, his earlier ones were gospel before he got into heavy rock. The artists were excellent, well except for the female singer who had very heavy vibrato. But a good show all the same, the pianist, Dannie Bourne, was exceptional, particularly when he played Great Balls Of Fire.






The next day we visited the Victoria Police Museum, part of the new police station in Flinders Street. They have on show the armour that two of the Ned Kelly gang from the late 1800s wore. Each set weighs about 45 kgs, (about 7 stone!) and although pretty well bullet proof actually helped in their capture as they restricted the movement and sight of the wearers.
Also there was part of the car used in the bombing of the old police station just a few years ago, in which a police woman was killed, and many injured. The perpetrator was killed in a police shootout, but others were captured and sentenced to very long terms.



Then on to the immigration museum, where several exhibits showed how the unfortunate migrants had to travel on the old sailing ships in the 1800s, sometimes for over three months in small sailing boats that rolled continually. Some did not survive, and others that did didn't find the utopia they had been told about. However, with hard work they improved their lot, and eventually were better off than at home.
More recently, in the last century, things were better, although many of the migrants had to spend time in camps before they were allowed to join the general community. Most have settled in well since, this country has been very good for them.


We had booked another show for the evening, a fairly new musical Legally Blonde, extremely active and fast.
The plot revolves around a blonde, thought to be dumb, who is determined to show the boyfriend who has chucked her that she wasn't, and went to Harvard to study law, eventually becoming a lawyer and finding love elsewhere.
A feel good show, with great artists, we presume famous here although we didn't know them. It had previously been on in London.

The Princess Theatre was established as early as 1854, and was as attractive as the best in London. With stained glass windows on the first floor, and pillars in the foyer, it was a treat just to walk about the place.
The auditorium itself was very 19th century, with stalls, dress circle and an upper circle, ornate ceilings and walls, and a large chandelier.
We were in the centre front row of the Dress Circle, we only booked last week so we were very very lucky, with possible the best view in the house.

We felt we still had more to see, so decided to stay on another day. Just along Collins Street from where we were staying is the old head office of the ANZ bank, built in Gothic Style in the 1880s.We were able to wander through the ground floor, part of which was the original stock exchange, and included the Cathedral Room, which has stained glass windows and is huge.

Below in the basement is a banking museum, containing many artefacts of days gone by including early banknotes and coins. One of the latter is a "Holy Dollar", a  coin used as the original currency in Australia, but was a Spanish coin with the centre cut out to make two coins, and used before coins and notes were minted here. We were told it is now worth over 200,000 dollars.


In the front is the banking hall, still used as such, and it is huge. Renovated in the style that it would have been in the old days, it is unlike any that we would see nowadays. It has an Atrium ceiling, and wooden desks over which banking transactions are made, and small private booths to one side. Memories of a bygone age!





Anne wished to visit a Monet exhibition in the National Gallery, so we spent a couple of hours there. I am not much interested in paintings, and except for a few of his earlier works I would not have been able to see what they depicted without the descriptions beside them. Maybe I'm a 'Palestine!' but I do know what I like.








Then it was my turn to choose, and we took a tram down to the Shrine of Remembrance, a mile or so south of the city. It is a memorial to the men and women who have served Australia in armed conflicts throughout the nation's history. Built between 1928 and 1934, it was inspired by the tomb of King Mausolus at Halicarnassus.



On the 11th hour of the eleventh day of November the sun shines directly on a stone in the centre of the shrine, and every half hour this is simulated during a very short and very moving ceremony which includes the Last Post. The few of us that were there during one of these bowed our heads in respect.





In the evening we had managed to get tickets for yet another show. This one was a comedy play in the Southbank Theatre, a new and very modern building with a theatre that held maybe 500. The play, True Minds, was a new one by Joanna Murray-Smith, and this was it's first season.
It revolves around the first meeting of a fiancée and her future mother in law, who is a "Margaret Thatcher" character, which becomes interesting when the girl's leftist parents and her alcoholic ex-boyfriend turn up unexpectedly. A simple one set play with just six characters, I think it will play around the world.

Melbourne by night is even more attractive, particularly from the bridge over the Yarra just south of Flinder's St Station, so I will leave you with that picture and one of the old trams, which runs around the CBD continually with a commentary, and is free to hop on and off. Flinder's Street Station is also a very attractive building, have a look at that too!