Natural history fest!

Today I decide, is going to be vaguely cultural in the morning, and decidedly beachy in the afternoon. With maybe a bit of social in the evening…
Thus happily planned, I am kindly given a lift into Perth by my cousin, and dropped off near the Museum of Western Australia.
A large and imposing building, it has several wings, the smallest but most significant of which is probably Perth Gaol, which now nestles in the courtyard at its centre.
I enter and find that it is donation only – the suggested $2 seems a measly sum for somewhere as well-endowed as London’s Natural History Museum, which is clearly is. The bright, clear lobby opens onto this multitude of wings, and I plump for the nearest; the Discovery Centre for a taste for the kids to enjoy. There are collections of various mammals and fish, what’s poisonous, what’s native, what’s nearly extinct. It’s interesting and, particularly the poisonous bit, useful!
Next stop, the sea section. Some items are tiny, others huge, all from Australasia. Tiny delicate powder blue brittle stars rub shoulders with tiny but chunky crabs of every shape and size – as if some Great Hand had decided that He liked the idea of crabs and wanted to play with it, encasing some in armour, stretching some so they had spindly spider-legs, squashing others so their legs were squat and hidden, and making some so unbelievably disproportionate that it was hard to imagine how they could stand up without overbalancing onto their own claws. Someone was having a Laugh with that one…
In this continent they forgot about size and proportion and made everything interesting. Things all seem to be either poisonous or have pockets!
Seriously, it’s amazing to be in a country where there is so much still to discover: a beautiful little delicate, pink-painted shell is described in its case, excitingly, as ‘unidentified pectinid’.
A quote on the wall encompasses it perfectly:
‘All we have yet discovered is but a trifle in comparison with what lies hid in the great treasury of nature’ – Antoni van Leewenhoek, 1680. And over 3 centuries later, he is still right. Amazing… But so sad to think that there may be so many species out there in the Aussie wild that will never make it onto the endangered list because no-one will have heard of them before they die out. Worrying thought.
Coo, sand dollars are huuuge! – I thought they were dainty little things the size of a coin, but you could have your dinner off one!
Next stop, Mammals. I am confronted by a flat-looking bandicoot-type thing, which is doing its best to fill a large glass case recently vacated by some of the slightly-less-flat-looking creatures that are in the Discovery Centre at the moment. They must run around in the night to confuse the curators, which have to track them down and put little plaques in saying where they’ve gone…
I likethe plaques in this museum, they are very intimate and judgemental: ‘The sloth bear has a mass of long hair and looks permanently unkempt’. Poor bear – maybe the specimen they have was just caught out on a bad hair day!
On the other hand, the Mi Lu (a kind of Chinese Red Deer) is very beautiful – rather like our own Red Deer, but daintier, more elegant… nobler. Apparently there are none left in the wild and the last ones are at Woburn Abbey ironically, which feeds other zoological institutions with its progeny.
I see a skeletal camel (enormous!) a skeletal rhino, many skeletons of mammals in fact, some in cages and some not, and one of a racehorse called Eurhythmic which won a lot in the 20s.
Factoid: apparently, the aardvark is the only creature in its order!
I pass to the next cabinet; it is sad that the first time I am this close to a red squirrel it is in a glass case, and decidedly dead. This is Not Right. Scotland here I come! In the same case is a sweet little creature that looks like an overexcited child’s drawing of a rabbit. Rather like a cartoon, it has soft pale blonde fur, long but rounded ears, a mass of neat whiskers and an unbelievably round face. It is called a Viscacha and apparently they have a penchant for collecting things, even travellers’ boots! Can you imagine, one night in your tent in the outback, hearing funny noises but being too sleepy to do anything about it, then the whole party waking up in the morning and finding that every single one of them is missing a left boot…?
The next case contains a stuffed baby orang outang. I don’t like seeing this one, it’s dainty little fingernails holding carefully to the fake twig he’s sitting on and his mournful little, slightly shrivelled, face are too pleading, too human, for me to look at for long.

I really ought to have been here before; it puts a context onto Aussie fauna that is useful, given that so many species and genuses are local only to this continent.
Butterfly and bird rooms are equally fascinating, brightly coloured moths and strangely crested lorikeets peep out of glass cases accusingly.
Geographically, I’ve been a few yards; intellectually I’ve raced across millennia and continents. It’s quite a surprise to find it’s been over an hour since I walked in and I’ve only been in one floor of one wing! I shake my head and move on, starting to feel a little peckish.

Diamonds and Dinosaurs is the room which draws me next. There are many interesting things in here. A partial dodo skeleton is a surprise, a mock-up of the Moa bird skeleton leaves me gaping in wonderment at its size (one single Moa egg would make an omelette for 70!) and various critters, mammal and reptile are all represented here in one form or another. A small child asks Dad many things, Dad has trouble pronouncing some of them, but seems every bit as enchanted with the relics here as his exuberant son, which is rather sweet. Passing on a while, I see fossilised insect tracks in red sandstone. Pausing at these sinister footsteps, it is evident that whatever made these would need more than a squirt of insect repellent or a fly swat! Millions of years old, these tracks were made by something a yard or so long, with a vicious sting and possibly more than the regulation number of legs… While I wonder at these massive beasties, a small blonde thing appears at my right knee and peers intently through the glass, then up at me. She seems fascinated by the tracks, and peers at me again. ‘Hello…’ I say, she holds my gaze for a moment before being swept up by an adoring mum with the words, ‘Come on, beautiful, the lady’s busy!’. She is evidently keen, even at two years old, to pursue her crustacean education, for, once let go of, she toddles back towards the footprints with every evidence of enjoyment. One to watch perhaps… ;)
Mind you, I have a keen interest in insects; possibly a terminal interest if I’m not careful around here!

I move on – the next room is filled top to toe with crystals of every shape and hue, spiked, kinked, rounded, fluorescent, twinkling, gilded, purple, yellow, pink… I am particularly caught by three things. Firstly, the diamond collection; they are tiny dots of amazing colour and light, but in varied colours from baby chav pink, right to light black via yellow and orange. Who would have thought a diamond could be so colourful!
Second, the stromatolites – these ancient living creatures were once the first beings on earth. Forming high-rise tenements of minerals around themselves, they slowly build large porridgy rocks, and have been here since before anything else. And they’re still here. Respect! Finally, a geode is home to some unusual crystals – they look like mothballs and have formed by thousands of tiny, tiny spindles of crystal all radiating out from a central point to form a seemingly soft and fluffy ball. Okenite, it’s called; hydrated calcium silicate.

Perth /gaol is the next and final stop here. In the courtyard outside, there is a large tank housing the world’s largest shark. Not quite as exciting as it sounds, since this one washed up on Perth beach, moribund (poor thing) several years ago and has since been pickled and popped in a display tank. It’s a plankton feeder anyway, so its massive jaws and long body would be unlikely to cause any real harm to anyone larger than a bug.
The Gaol itself is disappointingly devoid of anything prisoner-related, but instead houses a fascinating collection of items from the original settlers, the miners, the dairy farmers, the wives and families of the same and how they had to make do with what they had, learnt to be resourceful and never threw anything away.
There is also an Aboriginal display – I find it hard to stomach how such a previously noble people could be so abominably treated by the white settlers who stole their land, their rights and their dignity. Why force Christianity on a people who are older than Christ, for whom living in tune with the land is a vital part of existence? Why try to ‘breed out’ the aboriginal traits, and control their marriages, like so many breeding cattle. It wasn’t until recently that these atrocities, and the massacres too, were acknowledged and apologised for. Australia may seem like a wonderful place, but there are many harsh realities, political and personal, geographical and animal, which live here and must coexist.

After that moment of profundity, I decided to grab a snack and hit the beach (tip: pizza muffins might sound peculiar, but just you try one… Mmm…). I wander for a while around Perth before getting on the train to Cottesloe. Cottesloe is gloriously sunny (obviously) and I wander along the beach for a while, being whipped by a vicious wing that tears my hair about and slams vigorous quantities of sand onto the back of my legs. I paddle briefly to escape the stinging sand and find that the water is pleasantly warm. I find a couple of pretty shells and enjoy making salty footprints. It is, however, uncomfortably windy and I’m aware that it is getting late (hard to tell here as it still feels like about 3pm when it’s nearly 6!). I head back to Perth and after some faffing because I can’t find an appropriate bus station (der!), I meet my cousin and some friends in a pub called the Brass Monkey. I try a pale ale called Mad Yak. I couldn’t really refuse as this is Australia after all, and it’s locally brewed, so it’s practically rude not to! Anyway, that was very nice, unusually for me I enjoyed my half pint, as was the lasagne I had with it. I had intended to go to salsa tonight, at the Deen, having found out about it on Facebook, but was thwarted by the bouncer who demanded ID, not just any ID, ‘internationals have to be a passport’. Well, Humph! Pity really, I’d been looking forward to trying to dance my way around the world through Aus and the USA… Maybe there’ll be something on tomorrow night…?
Fremantle Market tomorrow too...
Ah well, best get some sleep now just in case!
But first I shall evict the strange creature that has invaded my bedroom. It's a cross between a grasshopper and a cricket and appears to have an ovipositor. Trouble is, Little Miss Bounce here with her trasparent leggies can jump a heck of a long way on one go...
'Hullo...?'
Boing
'Oh!' *creep closer*
Boing!
I make a creful step
Boing! *Hits her head on door*
'Aha!'
Boing! *into darkness outside door sill...*
She's still staring at me as I type, and creeps closer, pattering over a bit of paper, antennae waving. I turn to look at her...
Boing!
I give up...
Boing!
‘Night!

;)