Melbourne to Melbourne

The Melbourne Museum: Aboriginals and a Rubik’s Cube

The Melbourne Museum is no exception to our trend of asymmetrical and interesting architecture. The main entrance of the building features a large, open glass front that is tilted slightly forward, and on the back-end, a wing of the museum looks exactly like a giant, colorful cube stuck straight in the ground. I felt a sudden urge to go over and start shifting those squares around.

The museum is home to a number of exhibits that teach about the settlement and development of Southern Australia, and of the city of Melbourne in particular. The exhibition titled “First Peoples” explores the culture of aboriginals and how they were impacted by the arrival of settlers from England. Surprisingly, what I learned sounded like a very familiar story. Australia and the surrounding islands were dominated by hundreds of thousands of small tribes with nature-based cultures and spirit-oriented religion. The white man came in and took over, and many of the aboriginals died, while others adapted to the cultures of the new arrivals. I haven’t studied United States history since eleventh grade, but I did watch Pocahontas recently.

A difference in the dates of this invasion, however, creates a significant difference in the preservation of aboriginal lifestyle and heritage. Civilizations that modeled the European style did not really begin to flourish until the late 1800s. Therefore, the white, European influence, though forceful at first, did not quite have the same amount of time to truly deplete the aboriginal population the way European domination did in America a couple of centuries earlier.

Preservation of land and culture became a priority of the state while there was still what to be saved. Looking at some of these artifacts, like canoes and beaded jewelry, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Native American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Many of the designs and textures shared the same rich, organic feel. It seems that England had a thing for earthy civilizations.

To consider the distance between America and Australia while noticing these similarities is quite phenomenal. Here I am Whatsapping back home all the time and marveling at how small communication techonology has made the world, when in reality it seems like distant cultures had commonalities in nature-appreciation the whole time.

Just something to think about…

Arrival and Adjustment

6 hours to Los Angeles and 16 hours to Melbourne was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. My brilliant plan to download Stephen King’s “It” turned out to be completely unnecessary as I slept for majority of the flight.

The disorientation began with my little time travel excursion which resulted in the non-existence of June 30, 2014 in my frame of existence. From inside the airport, Melbourne looked just like New York, but the first curveball came when I tried to get into my friend’s car. I opened the door on the left side to find a steering wheel in front of the passenger’s seat.

Between jet lag, time-travel, and re-learning to cross the street, the first day was an adventure in of itself, and I didn’t even have to ride the tram!

Hello and Goodbye

It’s been about three years since I first considered the idea of studying abroad in Australia, and it’s finally time to get going.

On this eportfolio I’ll be documenting various, noteworthy experiences, posting photographs, and building up a little dictionary of Australian lingo.

Many thanks to my parents for supporting this little adventure and of course thank you to all the folks at Macaulay for making this whole experience
possible.