[A guest post from Kathy, one of our brilliant IDC volunteers!] 

Photo: Rodney Start  Source: Museum Victoria

On November 22, 2009, the Immigration Museum will celebrate Melbourne's Lebanese community. The Lebanese Cedar Festival showcases Lebanese culture through traditional music, dance, talks and films. Come along to enjoy roving entertainers, games such as touleh (backgammon) and lebanese coffee and sweets!

The Immigration Discovery Centre has a diverse range of resources focussing on migration and cultural diversity. We at the IDC have been having fun preparing for the Lebanese Festival. Resources include the Lebanese Resource Folder, a range of reference books and an Infosheet (prepared by one of our volunteers) on Lebanese migration to Australia. This contains a list of useful websites.

Infosheets have also been prepared on Dutch, German and Indonesian migration to Australia, with more to come soon...

Volunteers play an important role in the Immigration Discovery Centre, helping with things such as answering queries, preparing InfoSheets, and participating in community celebrations. If you'd like to find out more about volunteering with Museum Victoria, you can get more information here.

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

Today the Immigration Discovery Centre welcomed the most remarkable set of researchers: ESL students from Melbourne's CAE doing projects on waves of migration to Australia. I did my best to direct the students towards the resources most suitable for their ambitious assignments:  

Photo: Jan Molloy  Source: Museum Victoria

The whole centre buzzed with the exchange of books, ideas and questions as people who'd recently arrived in Australia unearthed the stories of those who'd come before, learning at so many levels that I stopped counting. 

Photo: Jan Molloy  Source: Museum Victoria

Since the opening of Melbourne Museum's "Day in Pompeii" exhibition, the Discovery Centre has had a Roman flavour, featuring ancient coins, gladiator helmets and books about Rome. Along with a "coin trail" in which children answer questions about gods and emperors, there's an activity table set up for coin-rubbing at which the profiles of Claudius, Nero, Trajan and Caracalla emerge beneath the crayons of visitors of all ages (but mainly the young): 

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

 This fun activity has proven so tempting that some of our own staff-members have been spotted having a rub - in disguise...

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

Melbourne Museum has launched a new exhibition, A Day in Pompeii, and the Discovery Centre is adapting accordingly, highlighting books about Rome and volcanoes, offering a coin rubbing activity for kids. Making space for the coins took a bit of reshuffling, in the centre, including the relocation of our heritage dinosaur statuettes from one room to another. Tertiary placement student Michael had no idea that his time with us would involve such labour! 

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria