Kids, monorails and gardens

I went to the Australian Museum yesterday. I remember when we went there before it was informative and interesting, giving a good insight into Aussie history and the impact that the European invasion has had on the land. Well, it must have a temporary exhibition as all I could see yesterday was skeletons, bugs and a ridiculous amount of kids on school trips. Anything that I did find interesting was immediately swamped by these kids to the point where I had to leave the museum or kill them! I was watching a video about how Australia separated from the land mass Gondwana many millions of years ago and a bunch of kindergarten kids ran over yelling 'look, a telly!!' like the little buggers don't have them at home! Honestly. I hope they learnt something because I didn't.

So a rather disgruntled H left the museum, resenting the 10 bucks that she had paid to watch a bunch of kids run riot- I used to get paid to watch that kind of thing after all. I went out to Hyde Park and started to read the book I had bought in the museum shop- the only good thing to come out of the trip- it is the tale of an Aboriginal woman who was taken from her mother and white father and set to be basically slave labour wherever people felt like sending her. It is called 'When the Pelican Laughed' or something like that and is fascinating stuff.

After a while, I moved myself out of the park and to Darling Harbour- since I am down to my last couple of days here I thought that there should be other things I could do. And I spent the best six bucks I was going to spend all day getting into the Chinese Friendship Gardens. They were built to mark the Australian Bicentennial in 1988 by the Chinese as an expression of their friendship with the people of New South Wales and Australia in general. It is a gorgeous oasis of calm in the middle of a noisy city. Little pagodas litter the edge of a pool which is fed by several small waterfalls. You can walk around it pretty quickly but then you have to go back and see all the bits you missed the first time around. Helen's recommendation for the day.

But it closes at 5 so I went out and onto the monorail. The monorail takes 15 minutes to do the entire circuit so I went round twice. It is supposedly a feasible form of public transport though I am sure that it is mostly for tourists. It runs around the harbour and along George Street for a bit before cutting back to the harbour. I went around and got off at George Street so I could go to the cinema.

Hoyts cinema is the largest in Oz with 17 screens. And they seem to have the biggest price too- twice the price that I have paid elsewhere in great little independent cinemas. I saw 'The Wedding Crashers' which was disappointing.

But the Chinese Gardens helped me keep my inner calm and I went home for reading and bed. Today- who knows! I have two days left here- today and tomorrow so I guess that I should get to a beach sometime.