I am simultaneously finishing a travel blog about the fantastic 4.5 month long trip Steven and I took last fall to Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and much of Central Asia before our final six weeks in Spain and Portugal and a few days in the Netherlands. If you're interested in checking that exciting adventure out, here's the link:
www.bergersadventures6.blogspot.com
Melbourne's roots can be traced back to the 1850s when gold was discovered in the surrounding hills. British settlers took up residence and prided themselves on coming freely to the city rather than arriving in convict chains. The latter is a story best left for my upcoming posts about our time in Tasmania!
I would have loved to spend more than just the few hours we had available that afternoon to spend in the city that is consistently rated among the 'world's most livable cities" in quality of life surveys.
The library's piece de la resistance was the majestic octagonal La Trobe Reading Room, one of the city’s most magnificent and photographed spaces. Its six galleries were topped by an exquisite dome. I was so relieved that Diane was okay seeing the library as I'd really wanted to see it after finding out about the famous library when Steven and I were in Guernica, Spain, last October and saw Australian-born William Kelly's massive peace exhibits that had hung in this room.
St. Paul's Cathedral was the home church for Anglican Christians, i.e. Presbyterians in the US, in the Melbourne Diocese and the province of Victoria, as well as home for other worshippers from more than 25 nations. It was built in just eleven years beginning in 1880 by an English architect in the neo-Gothic style but who never visited the city.
The cathedral was in the form of a cross to remind people that Jesus Christ died on a cross so that all people may have eternal life. Even though Steven and I have been in likely hundreds of cathedrals around the globe in our travels, I hadn't known until coming here that the word 'cathedral' comes from the Greek word 'kathedra' which means the teaching chair or throne of a bishop.
Though there was no cost to enter, visitors and pilgrims were encouraged to donate $5 each to help defray the AUD$5,750 per day to keep the doors open. Never had I seen any religious institution before state the daily cost of maintaining a facility. I wish more did as I think it's a marvelous idea.
In 1986, Pope John Paul II prayed in the Chapel of Unity with the then Anglican Archbishop and together they lit the unity candle praying for the unity of all Christians.
An older guide loved showing me the beautiful and intricate Narthex Screen that had been made of Tasmanian blackwood and specifically the Australian animals carved on it so much that I had trouble escaping!
Aboriginal people have inhabited the Australian continent for more than 65,000 years. The trauma of dispossession that followed the establishment in 1788 of British colonies in Australia had enormous ramifications. Widespread loss of language, culture and tradition changed the nature of life on the colonial frontier. At best the interactions between the Europeans and the traditional owners of the land were respectful and peaceful; at worst, violent and fatal.
Works by women artists were hung at major exhibitions, women slowly began to enter the managing ranks of art societies, and travel to Europe to pursue further study and professional opportunities was commonplace. While prejudice about women's capacity as artists remained widespread, more women gained recognition and respect as 'professional artists' in this period than ever before.
The beautiful teak screen was fabricated by Schulim Krimper from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who apprenticed to the town cabinet maker and worked his way through Europe prior to WW I and then settling in Berlin in the 1920s.
After fleeing Nazi Europe for Melbourne in 1939, he became known as the city's premier supplier of custom-made furniture, using both Australian and imported woods. The simple but refined construction of his furniture and the beauty of its surfaces made his work highly sought after.
It was interesting reading the description of this next painting by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrla called Kampurarrpa, an area near the Ehrenberg mountains where the artist made his first contact with Europeans. To put it mildly, I had difficulty seeing, in the concentric circles, women who had gathered at two campsites, an old man held in the spell of the woven fiber who apparently whistled to the women who couldn't hear him. The description stated that the man, believing that he he was shunned because of his ugliness, trudged away to Yumari where he had an illicit affair with his mother-in-law. HOW, I wondered, could such an interpretation be made without the artist having stated explicitly what he intended in his painting? The explanation seemed a flight of fancy to me!
In 1966 the watchmakers of Switzerland presented Melbourne with the gift of this Floral Clock that was placed in Queen Victoria Gardens. Thought the clock mechanism is now fully computerized, flowers and foliage must be no taller than 7.5" to ensure the clock’s hands aren’t impeded. Janina and Pat: You'd be interested to know that expert gardeners change the design twice a year in spring and autumn, ensuring the mix of 7,000 to 10,000 annuals and perennials catch the eye of all who wander in the gardens year-round.
Beyond the gardens was King's Domain, a large stretch of parkland a little south of the city center.
Like all memorials, the Shrine was a reminder of the price of freedom. I was glad that Diane and I had come here to reflect again how conflict affects everybody.
www.bergersadventures6.blogspot.com
After spending a glorious few days discovering the spectacular sights along the Great Ocean Road west of Melbourne, Diane and I sadly left the coastal town of Port Campbell and began our way back to the big city via the faster inland route. That way we would have a few hours at least seeing some of Melbourne before leaving the following morning for Tasmania, the island south of the mainland. We stopped halfway for coffee and pastries in the cute town of Colac where we noticed lots of butcher shops because of all the feed lots we'd seen en route.
It seemed so out of place to see a Target store on the town's main street!
In the middle of town was an attractive park with a gazebo so we wandered though it for a bit to stretch our legs before the final push back to Melbourne.
In the park, the town's War Memorial honored the service of Australians who had served in WW II and the Korean War and also those who met their obligations by serving in the Navy, Army or Air Force as past of the National Service - i.e. conscription - between 1951 and 1972.
This was our fabulous view from our hotel in the Docklands area of Melbourne where we stayed three separate times: after arriving from Christchurch in New Zealand, this time after the GOR side trip and then on our return from Tasmania before jetting home!
Melburnians, as the people of Melbourne are called, have the oldest tram network in the world and are blessed with having a Free Tram Zone that covers the city center. We caught the tram just outside our hotel intending to take it to the State Library of Victoria. We got most of the way there but had to get off after a woman on it fainted and the driver got on a speaker repeatedly requesting emergency medical assistance from the throngs of pedestrians. That was a little too much excitement for us after just a few days earlier being in Christchurch and seeing lots of emergency vehicles race by us toward the mosques that had been attacked.
I hadn't realized before I began planning our trip that Melbourne, pronounced Mel-bun, was such a cultural melting pot: more people of Greek descent live there than in any other city except Athens and multitudes of Chinese, Italian, Vietnamese and Lebanese have left their mark on the city. Almost a third of Melburnians were born overseas or have parents who were born overseas.
I would have loved to spend more than just the few hours we had available that afternoon to spend in the city that is consistently rated among the 'world's most livable cities" in quality of life surveys.
The State Library of Victoria, the fourth most popular library in the world, dated back to 1856 and had a collection of more than five million items including some of the world's rarest books with some medieval manuscripts illuminated in gold. We entered first the impressive Redmond Barry Reading Room from 1892 that once housed a museum filled with taxidermy and fossils.
Darlene: No doubt you'd have been intrigued seeing the Gordian Knot tapestry from 2017 made by the Australian Tapestry Workshop which took a team of weavers 2,064 hours over two years. I read that the design by award-winning artist Keith Tyson brought together "elements of biology, technology, cosmology and mythological and sociological evolution as a reflection of the world." I much prefer your beautiful creations, my dear!
The corridors around the dome were filled with historical items and books on display that changed the world like the Bible, Koran, Machiavelli's 'The Prince,' Charles Darwin’s 'On The Origin of Species,' Karl Marx’s 'Das Kapital,' Adolf Hitler’s 'Mein Kampf' and Chairman Mao Tse-tung's 'Little Red Book.' The library was obviously very well used by the general public, as there were lots of people using it and not just admiring it like tourists as we were.
When the domed room opened in 1913, it was the largest reinforced concrete dome in the world. It was modeled after the British Library's reading room and the Library of Congress in Washington.
The plaques acknowledged library donors who sponsored a glass panel in the restored dome in the La Trobe Reading Room.
A sculpture outside the Children's Literature Collection:
The library was certainly a must-see attraction for book worms, architecture lovers and history buffs! If we'd had the luxury of time, I would have loved to spend way more time exploring the library but, alas, we had to make time to at least get a sense of the city's other sights. The next on our 'list' was Block Arcade which involved a walk through the city's vibrant Chinatown.
This street musician was darn good.
The sculptures were a gift from the Pacific island government of Nauru in honor of Melbourne's 150th anniversary in 1994.
Union Lane caught our attention for a few minutes.
A little further on was Block Arcade, the city's most elegant shopping arcade when it made its debut in the 1880s when "Marvelous Melbourne" as it was then called was flush with the prosperity of the gold rushes. The name derived from 'doing the Block' which entailed promenading around Melbourne's fashionable shopping street.
A century later, renovations scraped back the grime to reveal a stunning mosaic floor. We had fun window shopping at some interesting boutiques and other high-quality shops.
Thank goodness my just drooling at all the yummy items in Hopetoun Tea Rooms' window didn't add pounds to my hips as so much looked so mouthwatering!
I smiled when I noticed the Portuguese Tarts in the display as Steven munched on those in every city we were in last December while touring Portugal as part of our very, very long trip that had begun in August.
One of the several hundred trams running over the 200 plus miles of track in Melbourne:
Natalie: I doubt you'll read this post but I thought of you and your love of Uggs when we passed by the native store.
St. Paul's Cathedral was the home church for Anglican Christians, i.e. Presbyterians in the US, in the Melbourne Diocese and the province of Victoria, as well as home for other worshippers from more than 25 nations. It was built in just eleven years beginning in 1880 by an English architect in the neo-Gothic style but who never visited the city.
It was heartwarming seeing a sign out front that indicated that since the cathedral stood on the traditional lands of the aboriginal Kulin Nation, the cathedral paid their "respects to elders past, present and emerging, and affirm our commitment to the work of reconciliation."
Across from the cathedral was the impressive Flinders Street Train Station.
Clearly, the street art scene was vibrant in Melbourne - all these and many more images were only in one short alley, too.
It was only fitting that our next attraction was the Ian Potter Centre as it contained the largest collection of Australian art in the country. Part of the National Gallery of Victoria, it had about 20,000 objects with aboriginal art and colonial art the centerpieces of the gallery.
Aboriginal artist Tommy McRae created figurative drawings on paper as a means of recording the turbulent changes in his culture in 1891.
The painting by John Longstaff depicted the bush fires that ravaged Gippsland in the summer of 1897-1898. The worst day, February 1st, 1898, was named 'Red Tuesday.'
This hand-carved 1867 Cliveden marble mantlepiece was originally installed at one of Melbourne's most extravagant private residences from the 'boom' period of the 1880s. It was an example of 'marvelous Melbourne' decoration - handcrafted, opulent and drawing extensively on European tradition.
The 1905 painting Hauling the logs resonated with us as we'd been behind so many trucks hauling logs the last two days!
Frederick McCubbin's The pioneer, painted in 1904, was of early Australian settlers created in three panels following the country's Federation. It showed a pioneering couple in their new bush environment initially, and then several years later with the woman holding a baby with land cleared and a small house visible in the distance. In the final panel, a bushman discovers a grave and a city has emerged. One is left to wonder who has died and whether the male figure was the pioneer, his son or a stranger.
I loved reading this informative piece on Modern Australian Women: Works from a Private Collection. The turn of the 20th century was a crucial time for Australian women artists. By 1900, women were an active presence at the country's major art schools where female students far outnumbered their male peers.
No wonder Diane was taking a breather as we'd left Port Campbell on the Great Ocean Road many hours earlier and we still had more still to see in Melbourne!
What a lovely idea having the lamp in the middle of the room as it provided a sense of peace in addition to illuminating the paintings.
I hadn't known before coming to the gallery that Sidney Nolan was one of Australia's famous painters. From 1949 to 1953, he turned to the country's 'red center' as a subject in a series of paintings. This painting from 1949 was called Central Australia, and was about an area that Steven and I visited together several years ago.
Another notable Aussie painter was Russell Drysdale whose landscapes of the Outback helped shape a new image of Australia in the postwar era. Many of his paintings of the remote parts of the continent in the 1940s were influenced by Surrealism and characterized by a sense of disquiet. The two small figures in The Rabbiters were dominated by strange rock formations and upside-down tree trunks with writhing roots.
One of the oddest paintings I've seen in a while was the oil on plywood Scientific priest by Dusan Marek who declared that he became a Surrealist at the ripe old age of 13! His commitment may have influenced his move to Papua New Guinea which had been placed at the center of the 1929 Surrealist Map of the World, something I was sure never aware of before. Marek remained firmly dedicated to Surrealism throughout his life and artistic career.
In the early 1950s John Brack adopted the urban Melbourne environment as his subject, recording the shops, bars and workplaces of the city with an ironic edge. This painting is among the most memorable works by Brack of this period and depicted Melbourne's financial hub at the end of the working day, its uniformly dresses office workers streaming homeward. Inspired by Brack's own experience working for a city-based insurance company, the formal repetition and muted palette emphasized the drudgery of nine-to-five life. However, by personalizing each figure Brack points to the enduring presence of the individual. Collins St. 5 p.m.
Two Typists from 1955 Melbourne was also by John Brack. Did you notice the feet at the top of the painting?!
It was interesting reading the description of this next painting by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrla called Kampurarrpa, an area near the Ehrenberg mountains where the artist made his first contact with Europeans. To put it mildly, I had difficulty seeing, in the concentric circles, women who had gathered at two campsites, an old man held in the spell of the woven fiber who apparently whistled to the women who couldn't hear him. The description stated that the man, believing that he he was shunned because of his ugliness, trudged away to Yumari where he had an illicit affair with his mother-in-law. HOW, I wondered, could such an interpretation be made without the artist having stated explicitly what he intended in his painting? The explanation seemed a flight of fancy to me!
The painting reminded me immediately of the rock formations called the Twelve Apostles Diane and I'd seen just late yesterday afternoon along the Great Ocean Road.
It was really hard understanding how this McDonald's Filet-o-Fish bed was considered 'art' and had made it in this very fine museum!
Arnhem Land is a vast wilderness area in the northeast corner of Australia’s Northern Territory. It's home to the traditional landowners, the Yolngu people, and permits are required for non natives to visit. Artists living in that area create hollow logs which are customary mourning objects that display designs.
This practice was popularized by the powerful political statement of The Aboriginal Memorial, an installation of 200 hollow logs signifying indigenous deaths and loss through 200 years of contact with white people, made for the country's bicentennial in 1988.
I loved the time we chose to spend at the National Gallery of Victoria's Ian Potter Centre as it gave me a far greater sense of the breadth of Australian art than I had after visiting the country several years previously with Steven. Then, we had only come across or, perhaps more accurately, sought out aboriginal art.
The gallery was part of Federation Square, an abstract-style landmark designed to be Melbourne's official meeting place with a variety of attractions and restaurants within it. This section was definitely the wilder part of the square!
The meeting place with such a lovely backdrop would have been a perfect place to sit a spell but there was no time for that that afternoon.
We walked across the Yarra River on our way to the Shrine of Remembrance located a good piece away but well worth every step!
At the top of the clock was a monument to King Edward VIII.
Walker Fountain was donated to the people of Victoria by the city's former Lord Mayor and his wife in 1974.
Beyond the gardens was King's Domain, a large stretch of parkland a little south of the city center.
The marble Australian Hellenic Memorial commemorated those who lost their lives in Greece and Crete during WW II. The memorial recalled the shape of an amphitheater and its Doric columns symbolized the birth of civilization.
The Seeds of Friendship was an Australian-Turkish Memorial that commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings in 2015.
This shelter of peace was inaugurated by the High Commissioner - akin to an ambassador if not part of the British Commonwealth - for Malta in 1994.
We arrived at the Shrine of Remembrance just as Taps was being played and the flags were being taken down at 5. When it was constructed in 1924, it commemorated the 19,000 men from just the relatively small province of Victorians that were killed during WW I. Since then it has become a memorial to all Australians who have served in war.
Written in front of the memorial were the striking words "Let All Men Know This is Holy Ground."
The large open area in front of the memorial was called the Forecourt and was the WW II memorial and included the Eternal Flame.
As the Shrine was located on a hill overlooking the city, we had marvelous views of downtown. My attention was drawn to the image reflected on this skyscraper and wondered who it was.
On either side of a path leading away from the Shrine was a row of cypress trees that had been presented by various countries to the city. We sat for a few minutes to regain our energy before walking back to the city center in front of the tree that had been donated by Bhutan, a Buddhist kingdom on the Himalayas' eastern edge.
I find that more than a little eerie now writing this as Steven and I are in the middle of planning a trip that will take us next spring, God willing, to Morocco, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, mid and southern India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, Japan and ending up in Hawaii as it looks now. Never did I have a sense that likely about a year after sitting by chance in front of this tree that I might be visiting the tiny kingdom!
The short time Diane and I had been so far in Australia we'd seen so many similar signs welcoming refugees. I wondered if part of it may have been in reaction to the fairly recent revelations that the Australian government had refused immigrants arriving by boat to reach the mainland and the horrific conditions they'd been forced to live in on an island.
After such a full day that had started out on Great Ocean Road and ended with our taking a whirlwind self-guided tour of Melbourne's most famous sights, we were pretty wiped out once we retraced our steps to the Flinders Street Station and caught the free tram back to our hotel! As that was our only chance of seeing the exciting and beautiful city, I was very thankful that Diane and I saw as much as we did in such a short time.
Next post: An early start to the island of Tasmania off the southern mainland.
Posted on June 5th, 2019, from back at Grayton Beach State Park in Florida for two more weeks after a few days away in Mobile, Alabama. Unfortunately, the weather forecast has 14 straight days of storms for us to look forward to!
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