Fascinating Facts/Australia
One advantage of group travel is that, with a conscientious, well-informed guide, you effortlessly learn a great deal about the country as you travel through it. In Australia, what we learned from our tour leader Maree and local guides was supplemented by a wealth of information in this land of museums. Though we spent relatively little time in those institutions, we invariably picked up fascinating factoids in each one. In the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, for instance, we discovered . . .
The Hapless Plight of Prisoners: Later, during a tour of the Old Melbourne Gaol (jail), we learned about the inhumane treatment of early Australian prisoners and were shocked to learn it was modeled after that of a Quaker jail in Philadelphia. Quakers! Those pious, peace-loving souls! The church of my childhood! Sometimes you have to leave home to learn the hard truths of history. In Melbourne, entering prisoners were given only a Bible to read and locked in solitary for 23 hours a day on the ground floor of the jail. It was believed this would “cure” them. (What were the jailers thinking?) Well-behaved inmates were later moved to the second or third floor where they could gain certain privileges, share cells with others, and possibly even get their sentences shortened. But there were drawbacks—especially on the third floor where cells were large and crowded, had no plumbing for disposal of human waste, and practically no ventilation, a particular hardship on hot summer days. Just imagine! In Sydney, we took in the Australian Museum—parts of it, that is, including a section housing the Bone Ranger, a skeleton of a man astride a skeleton of a horse. (Aussie humor again.) But moving on, here’s some of what we learned about the Aborigines:
Oceanic Issues: Another section of the museum focused on the world’s oceans. Particularly impressive was an exhibit showing the locations of the 100,000,000 people who live no more than a meter above the current sea level, raising the question, of course, of what will become of them as sea levels continue to rise. Other factoids about the seas . . .
And at various stops along the way, we gathered additional tidbits, including . . .
And that’s that . . . for now. |
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