4 - 11 October was Senior's Week in Victoria, and to celebrate, Discovery Centre at Melbourne Museum offered a series of 'Internet for Seniors' sessions, where seniors had the opportunity to come into the centre for a two-hour session to learn about and practice on those new-fangled computer-machines and that 'information-superhighway' (as one of our distinguished students called it) that is the internet.

Although many came into the sessions with deep concerns, for example that they might break the internet, our seniors came away fom the sessions having proved that its never too late to learn a new skill and with an expanded vocabulary including such new words as 'website', 'email', 'blog', 'laptop' and 'mouse'.

Well, mouse isn't quite a new word, but hopefully if they understood its alternative meaning correctly they won't go home and try and sick the cat onto it...

Photo: Nicole Davis  Source: Museum Victoria

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

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

This morning the Immigration Discovery Centre was crowded with visitors researching their family history - there wasn't a spare computer! I helped a number of people locate relevant information via the internet, including a couple of sisters seeking information about their ancestors who travelled to Victoria at the end of the 19th century. The pair spent over an hour in the centre, murmuring away, exploring PROV's website, cooperating like people who'd always known each other. 

Photo: Philip Thiel  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