Do Not Read This Title

At Melbourne museum there is a recreation of two cottages from the former Little Lon district, either a miserable slum and red light district or vibrant working class community of migrant and itinerant workers. Or both.


The panel there says....

You are invited to enter the world of Little Lon in the 1880s and 1890s.

Alleys, backyards and parts of two houses are recreated here: one of a very poor family, the other of a family better off. Although new timber buildings were outlawed in 1850, many survived for several decades, in increasing states of disrepair.

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When we went to the Melbourne Museum (to see the Titanic exhibition), we had time to kill beforehand so I headed off for the permanent exhibitions, muttering something about finding the computer. I seemed to remember it being in a side room over there when we visited the museum in 2005, but they've since rearranged everything. It's not exactly something that they'll stick in a back room either. But I knew it wasn't over there or up there because that's where I went last year. We looked above over there, and found some other interesting stuff, (of course, this museum is very full of interesting stuff) and I took photos of some of it.

Then we went and looked at wrecked ship artefacts.

Afterwards, I headed for some seats so I could sit down and address my postcard. (They had no Titanic postcards. I have Titanic postcards. They're not that hard to get. Maybe visitors would buy them instead of the other overpriced stuff in the exhibition gift shop, but postcards can be easily posted or stuck on walls to look, and you can't do that with anything else. The actual museum gift shop though, they have lots of interesting postcards.) Anyway, I dumped by bag on the seat and went off for a toilet break, and when I came back, mother said, "You were looking for the computer?" "Yes." "It's downstairs.

So I went downstairs, and there it was.

( Photos )