Last couple of days in Victoria

We're wrapping up our time in Victoria with David and Beth, but will be back for a few days at the end since we are flying out of Melbourne.  On Fri, we did another museum day in the city, visiting the Immigration Museum and the Melbourne Museum.
The Immigration Museum was quite interesting, showing both the bright and dark sides of immigration policies over the years--times of recruiting/subsidizing immigrants and times of exclusion and/or selective admittance.  As with aboriginal policies, there ware many parallels with the US.
At the Melbourne Museum (a very large museum), we focused on the Aboriginal history and Melbourne history exhibits.   The Aboriginal exhibit presented some things similar to what we saw in the Grampians, but covered a much broader geographical area and delved into other aspects of aboriginal life.  One difference that I note in how aboriginal history/culture is presented in Australia versus how Native American history/culture is presented in the US is that the indiginous people here seem to tell their own stories, as oppposed to academics (sociologists, archaeologists, etc.) producing the exhibits.  It gives a much different feeling to the presentations.

Melbourne Museum:  Australian coat of arms in taxidermy

The Melbourne history exhibit presented a typical range of stories and artifacts related to the development of the city:  housing, recreation, transportation, prominent women and men, etc.  One display that made this museum unique was a very prominent display right at the entrance about the race horse Phar Lap--the greatest horse in the history of Australia.  It even includes the preseved horse himself as his body was sent to a taxidermist before repatriation to Australia.  Long story short:  big winner in Australia, sent to US, wins first race, dies mysteriously.  (Tests have shown a presence of arsenic in hair samples.)  To put this in a bit of context, Australians are a bit more passionate about horse racing that typical folks in the US (outside of Kentucky, at least) and the Melbourne Cup (biggest race of the year) is (and has been since the 1870's) an official holiday in Victoria.
On the way home, we made a brief stop at the Australian war memorial, named the Shrine of Remembrance.  It is located at a high spot, which gave very nice panoramic views of downtown.

Shrine of Remembrance.  It was built to honor WWI veterans, but was completed just a few years before WWII (which started in 1939 for Australia, rather than almost 1942 for the US).

View towards downtown Melbourne from the war memorial.

Saturday we "soloed" and headed out in our rental car for the Great Ocean Road, which includes the iconinc formations called the 12 Appostles.  We successfully navigated out of the city and headed SW to Port Campbell, ate lunch (more meat pies) and headed east along the road.  After a bit of mis-direction, we eventually saw Loch Ard Gorge (where a shipwreck occured in 1878), the 12 Appostles and Gibson Beach.

Windy day with a couple of "apostles" in the background (looking east).  The formations were apparently first named "Sow and piglets," but some chamber-of-comerce-type thought "Apostles" would market better for tourists.

Some apostles from Gibson Beach (looking west).  The surf was up in the Indian Ocean (aka Great Southern Ocean in Australia).

Susan at Lock Ard Gorge, site of the shipwreck.

The weather was not always the best, with rather sudden stretches of rain, but these were brief and interspersed with periods of bright sun.  The scenery, of course, was beautiful, but it was very crowed, probably 90% foreigners like us.  They obviously expect a lot of non-Australians as there are signs outside every car park reminding drivers to "drive on the left in Australia."  We  also stopped at a rain forest walk in Otway National Park, one of the most intriguing short walks I've ever been on.  The tree ferns were incredible and created an atmosphere in which one would not be totally surprised to see a dinosaur about.  The Mountain Ash trees (aka eucalyptus) are the tallest blooming plants in the world with an order of magnitude scale approaching that of redwoods.  Heights are in the 40-m range and we approximated the base-width of one tree near the trail to be about 8 m.

Tree ferns in raain forest.

Wesley and Susan inside the trunk of the "Mountain Ash" tree. 

We the cut back inland to get the freeway back to Melbourne, stopping in Geelong for dinner.  Even arriving after dark, we navigated back home without problems.