Alas, it is time to say goodbye to Australia and bring this
trip to an end ☹
I woke up in my space capsule, took a shower, had a good
breakfast, and loaded like a burrito walked the 6 blocks to the Australian
Museum, where I was planning on spending my last morning in Sydney. It was a
lovely walk, but I got there at 9 am, half an hour before opening time.
Normally I would not mind waiting for half an hour, but I am feeling “bloated”
with intestinal gas, and I could have used immediate access to the restroom. I
walked up and down outside, not wanting to embarrass myself by passing gas in
front of the 20 or more teenage girls waiting in line. Finally they opened and
I rushed in to seek relief. Ahh!
The museum is in many senses a Victorian era exhibition of
curiosities, but they had an interesting exhibition about the struggle between
Aborigines and Europeans, and the slow acknowledgement of the first ones as the
First Australians (1965 to 2005). Interspersed were displays of aboriginal
artifacts, and recounting of their legends. A fascinating film showed the
discovery in central Australia of an old lake bottom (very shallow lake) with
footprints on it, as would have been made by people going back and forth across
the shallow lake, with kids horsing around. One of the set of footprints has
been interpreted as being from a one-footed man hoping on his way (of course
they are full of it, because the “hop prints” were separated by a good 3 meters
from each other; I bet it was a man floating in a canoe, and guiding his way
across the lake by pushing against the bottom with his dangling foot). But the
interesting part is that the bed on which the footprints are preserved has been
dated between 16,000 and 20,000 years ago. Somebody has determined that
Aborigines migrated into Australia from Papua New Guinea 60,000 to 40,000 years
ago, and these dates are now part of the “original” legends told by the
descendants of those First Australians.
Damn, I need to go back to the restroom. My tummy hurts.
The museum also has a hall with deadly Australian fauna,
where I saw the biggest crocodile ever, all sorts of snakes, poisonous fish,
talon-wielding platypuses, sharks, wild-eyed cassowaries, but alas, no
bird-eating spiders. In typical Victorian fashion there were cases packed with
kangaroos and wallabies, bats and owls, possums and bandicoots, echidnas and
pangolins, and every possible type of bizarre animal found in this land. Thylacines
(or Tasmanian tigers) lead the list of the species now extinct.
Hold on, I need to visit the little boys’ room.
They had a very fine display of prehistoric animals that
became extinct at the end of the last glaciation, including giant wombats and
fierce looking giant kangaroos. Going one step farther the exhibition included
some of the main types of dinosaurs found in Australia (which are the same we
know from South America and Africa, since at that time all these landmasses
were welded into Gondwana). One particularly gruesome exhibit had a full-size
T-Rex being dissected by a group of nerdy Mesozoic zoologists, which had
already removed the stomach, heart, and ovaries, and were in the process of
cutting off one of the legs. Sicko!
Really? Is this eruption in my vowels never going to stop?
Finally, there is a hall dedicated to South Pacific masks,
which would bring joy to the heart of my friend Bob. Me, I am sure I wouldn’t
find it all that fun to walk through my house at night having all those scary
demons and spirits watching me from their pegs in the wall.
Alas, all to soon came time to visit the facilities one more
time and head for the airport, which was the easiest thing in the world because
the train station a block from the museum is on the direct line to the airport.
It took me no more than 20 minutes to go from museum to the check-in counter,
and in another 10 minutes I was already in the vast departure area of the
international terminal. I had managed my money pretty well, and on my last day
I had no more than AUS$ 1.50 in my pocket. But at 1 pm I still had four hours
to wait, and everybody was having lunch. But maybe I should skip lunch to give
my tummy a chance to rest. But there were stacks of delicious sandwiches
tempting me. But I would not like to get on board with an overloaded stomach.
But what if I faint of hunger waiting for my flight? At the end of 10 minutes
of struggle I converted a few US dollars into Aussie currency, had a pastrami
sandwich on rye (hey, if you are going to overindulge why do it meekly), and am
know writing this coda to my travels. I am sure I will survive to travel to
some new place in the near future.
Finis
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