Just behind the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens is the Melbourne Museum. A mix of Melbourne’s history, information about the Aboriginals of the area, dinosaurs, the human body and other fun and interesting exhibits.
I had primarily come for the Bunjilaka exhibition and the Melbourne Story. The Bunjilaka exhibition focuses on the Aboriginal people who have lived alongside the European settlers over the years and how they have had to change and adapt their way of life, often unfairly and forced.
The exhibition contains indigenous stories, art and objects which are important to the Aboriginal people. At many times throughout the colonisation of Australia the indigenous peoples have been treated unfairly at times and abhorrently at others. This exhibition lets those people tell their side of the story and share their beliefs, their culture and knowledge.
The Melbourne Story looks at the history of Melbourne, the changes the city has gone through both in the buildings and the people, the culture, the trams and the rise of sporting passions.
Phar Lap is there to greet visitors. At least the stuffed hide of this famous horse who was foaled in New Zealand is there (the skeleton is in New Zealand and the heart in Canberra). Phar Lap was trained and raced in Australia and has become as famous and idolised as Don Bradman.
Moving through the Melbourne Story visitors are taken on a tour featuring objects, photos and videos of Melbourne’s history. Since 1835 when John Batman agreed to “buy” the land from the Aboriginal people, Melbourne has grown into Australia’s finest city. The early days of John Hoddle’s street plans, the slow arrival of immigrants and eventual separation from New South Wales meant Melbourne’s early days were slow. When gold was found in Victoria everything changed. Melbourne grew at a rate that the city struggled to sustain.
Since those initial prosperous years there were hard times, boom times led to depression. The creation of Australia in 1901 saw Melbourne as the country’s first capital city (until the location of Canberra was decided upon). Early immigration laws ensured a White Australia Policy, the country began to find it’s own identity and two world wars strengthened that.
Melbourne grew even more during the 1950s and 1960s. The suburbs grew and good relations with both China and the USA meant cheap electronics, a new modern world. Queen Elizabeth II become the first English monarch to visit in 1954. The Olympics came to Melbourne in 1956, confirming what everyone already knew – that Melbourne was the country’s sporting capital.
And not forgetting that Melbourne also had the “World’s Oldest Bookshop with a Cage of Live Monkeys”.
I passed briefly through the rest of the museum. I prefer to see living animals to dead and stuffed ones and whilst interesting, Melbourne Museum contains many other pieces of natural history that can be seen in many other museums around the world.
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