This afternoon I had the pleasure of introducing Peter Plowman at the launch of his new book Migrant Ships to Australia and New Zealand, 1900 to 1939. For a couple of hours, Immigration Museum's theatrette became the site of an old-fashioned slideshow, as vessel after vessel flashed onto the screen to Peter's expert commentary. Masts came and went, funnels grew and diminished, names altered, colours changed - and history charged forward from the start of the century via two World Wars. Who knew that so many ships made the perilous journey from Europe to Australia? Then, in 1914, and again in 1939, they all turned around again.

Photo: W. S. Anderson  Source: Museum Victoria

We had a curious donation the other day - a well-dressed gentleman came in bearing a heavy plastic tub full of ice and one sadly-deceased echidna. He had found the echidna's body on the road when driving. He hadn't wanted to leave what was an almost-perfectly intact specimen for the crows to eat, thinking that the Museum might have a use for it.

Photo: Siobhan Motherway  Source: Museum Victoria

Given that many carrion-eating birds are killed by cars whilst dining on previous roadkill victims, this was probably not a bad move! Sadly, according to an echidna monitoring group, one in five sightings of an echidna is of one killed on the road. The spines of an echidna, which are actually modified hairs, are sharp and strong enough to pierce a car tyre - not that this really helps the echidna.

Photo: Siobhan Motherway  Source: Museum Victoria

Our Collection Manager came to collect the echidna, remarking as he did so that he wasn't able to tell us whether it was a male or a female, as unless the echidna has young in her pouch, they are fairly indistinguishable on the outside. Australian Echidnas are one of the few species belonging to the order of monotremes. Two species of echidna and the platypus are the only egg-laying mammals, or, as one young visitor to the centre described them, "animals dat lay eggs and boopfeed their babies!" They have other traits that distinguish them from other mammals, including their lower body temperature, slow metabolism and relative longevity.

That is, unless they try to cross a road.

Photo: Unknown  Source: Arnost Vochala 

At first, I thought I was in for a convict story. The visitor to the Immigration Discovery Centre was holding out an old photograph of a scary-looking prisoner and clutching a bundle of papers. But he was also pointing at himself, and after a few seconds I saw the resemblance. "It's you!" I realised, before hearing the story of three Czechoslovakian friends arriving in Adelaide, 1949, and making friends among "the theatrical crowd." Result? A newspaper article about "one of the biggest night crowds ever seen at Glenelg" - BIG CROWD SEES MARDI GRAS - at which the fancy-dress prize "went to three New Australians who arrived from Czechoslovakia three months ago....all of Kilkenny, who wore striped pyjamas and 'trimmings' to represent a chain gang."

Proudly, the man held out a second photograph, saying "that's Oldrich, that's Ziri - and that's me." Curious party - and not a bad effort for a bunch of immigrants still recovering from jetlag.  

Photo: Unknown  Source: Arnost Vochala

The important question of the visibility of the moon will become even more resonant, this weekend, as Muslims around the world look to the skies for a glimpse of the lunar sliver that will signal the end of Ramadan.

This morning I was on the telephone to a devout man in the "naked eye tradition" - those who will only end the fast when the moon has been spotted - who wanted clarification of the moon's rise and set times on the website of Melbourne's Planetarium. Where should he look? When will it rise? At another (American) website a dismal-looking black square signified invisible moons until halfway through the weekend, but the man on the phone insisted that he could see the hint of reflected light, on his own screen, "like a reversed C." I said: "you look with the eyes of faith..." 

Photo: James W. Young  Source: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

Īd mubārak!

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

On Thursday, Melbourne Museum's Discovery Centre hosted a group of young art students along with a number of marine birds. The birds were set up on tables across the centre for the inspection of the students of Torquay College doing a cool program run by the Geelong Gallery which involved drawing things realistically by looking and copying. They'd already been upstairs to sketch the blue whale...

We were impressed not only by the final results (I wish I could draw!) but the quietness and concentration displayed by the budding artists - never before had we seen so many children so still, with only their wrists and pencils moving.

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria