We're in Australia!

After a fairly uneventful 14-hour flight from LA, we arrived in Sydney. We hit the ground running; we disembarked around 7:00 a.m. and Charlie had us walking to the ANZAC memorial in Hyde Park by 9:00.

The walk through Hyde Park and The Domain (which adjoins the Royal Botanic Gardens) took us past fig trees with amazingly huge trunks. Some of the walkways had thick canopies of tree branches. In fact, it was raining off and on this morning, and even when it poured, we were protected from the rain when under the canopy.

At 10:30, we started our tour of the Barracks Museum. The first white settlements in Australia consisted of convicts and their guards. The barracks were built to house the male convicts in the Sydney settlement. The third floor of the museum replicates the sleeping quarters, complete with dozens of hammocks. With one exception, we all climbed into hammocks and rested there as the guide described the living conditions and daily schedule of these men. Charlie did not rest, but moved down the row of hammocks, accepting cameras from the students, and snapping their pictures.

Thanks to detailed records of punishments inflicted on the convicts, and the multitude of rats that used cloth and small items for nest-building, much has been determined about the way of life for the men and women housed here in the 19^th century. When Great Britain stopped shipping convicts to Australia, female immigrants lived in the barracks until they found work in the community.

In some of the rooms, boxes of typical clothing were available. A couple of our students obliged and modeled these for us, including a standard long skirt, blouse, and bonnet for the female and the jester-like apparel forced upon the male convict who continued in his wicked, wicked ways.

We separated for lunch. There were a few street performers out and about, the most notable one blowing huge bubbles for our students to photograph.

In the afternoon we had a guided tour of the Australian indigenous peoples exhibit at the Australian Museum. The guide was quite passionate and knowledgeable – and American! He paralleled the treatment of the first inhabitants of Australia by the white government to the treatment of the Native Americans by white America.

The museum has many other exhibits, and I’m thinking of returning on a day when I’m not so tired. The guided tours and the other wings of the Australian Museum will help our students choose the topic of their reports- - well, that’s the plan.