Cool things about Sydney: Maritime Museum

Replica of Cook's Endeavour

 Among the many things-to-do around here, I counted the Maritime Museum high on my list, and I was right to do so.  Last Sunday we enjoyed a sweet day down there, the day after Amelie and Alex had gone there (while I sat at home and worked) and been frustrated by a power outage in the main galleries.  This being Australia and not France, they were given chits to come back next day when everything would be open.  How cool is that?
     So down we went on a bus, then over on foot. This juxtaposition of old and new just struck me hard as I visited the destroyer and submarine--making me appreciate how gutsy these early mariners must have been, to set out for months and years with the kind of tools they had, far more vulnerable than just about anything we do today.  I guess for someone my size the other thing that gets you is just how cramped everything would have been--no headroom, and no privacy anywhere.  And of course, imagining the stench os such a space is hard to imagine as well.

Alex was fascinated by the armaments of course, but has no clue how scary it might have been to have been shot at, no matter how much armor plate there was around him.  I keep thinking back to my own reading back then, the breathless accounts of sub warfare and heroism on aircraft carriers, until it slowly dawned on me that those fighter pilots were literally shitting their pants in fear as they went up against better-trained and better-equipped enemies and saw their friends blown out of the sky...

It's interesting to see how risk-averse he is (something we are thankful for in some respects, except when he doesn't want to leave the bunny slope), given the lack of impulse control in so many other areas.

Of course it wasn't all war stuff, and I was fascinated by this display of rowing-related artifacts.  Here were two fours, one old and one new, arrestingly arranged vertically.  What an amazing effect, to look up forty or fifty feet like this and have this installation.  Then from a mezzanine you got a good look at the guts of the boats without being close enough to touch.

I ended up talking quite a bit with one of the docents at a rebuilt freight-carrying sailing vessel also moored at the docks, appreciating as always just how much care and love these restorers take in their work.  They are "foamers" in the same way that train foamers foam-at-the-mouth about all things related to rail, but somehow it was endearing to have a yarn with these people and catch a glimpse into their world.