Going Against the Flow: Term Three: Week One ~ Excursion

We started Term Three with a bang by taking an excursion into the city on the Tuesday morning. (Monday Munchkin had an all day Lego day at a local church so we started the term on Tuesday) We decided it was time to do the Hyde Park Barracks Museum as Munchkin is old enough to understand everything. Therefore this blog post is HUGE but I hope you find it enjoyable and informative. We haven't spent a whole day roaming the city since before COVID so I took a LOT of photos.

But first, the succulent plant at church that Munchkin and I are watching with great interest. We have never seen it flower before so every week we check the progress.

Waiting for the train... apparently it is impossible to get my boys to cooperate for a nice photo together these days.

A somewhat blurry photo as our train comes into the city.

The boys and I admired Archibald Fountain before we did anything else. The fountain was closed off in October last year for renovations so I was glad to see it was working again.

I haven't been to the Hyde Park Barracks Museum since Monkey was a baby so it was a new experience for me as well. Since the last time we were there they have installed a lift (elevator) and completely changed the format of the entire museum. Previously all the information was written on big boards on the walls... now everything is visual and you carry an iPod with a recorded voice tour. I chose not to listen to the voice tour, but all three boys took an iPod and we were off to explore.

Monster took his own tour alone, Monkey often roamed around with me, and I mainly tailed Munchkin while he roamed, listened, and looked at everything there was to see. I was impressed with his behaviour and museum visits take on an entirely different perspective and quality when you visit with older children.

Monkey was enthralled with this old map of Sydney that is on display in the museum. He loves all things maps and geography based and spent a long time looking at it.

The museum still has "treasures" in the floor to look at - mostly things that the rats and mice collected.

My favourite room is the hammock room. When I visited numerous times before having children (with friends who came to visit) you could lay in the hammocks. I don't think they allow that anymore though.

Monkey and Munchkin enjoyed roaming around quietly and looking at all the different display cases.

Another new addition to the museum were these tiny renditions of life in the early colony. They are amazing and so detailed. You could literally spend a whole day just examining all the fine details of the many scenes.

There were audio components to each of the different scenes - here Munchkin is looking at a scene while also listening to the recording.

The other excitement for the day was that there was a demonstration in Hyde Park (across the road from the museum) and the police were there and brought their horses. I enjoyed watching them unload the beautiful horses.

A couple of photos of St James church taken from the window of the museum.

They had a display of the leg irons that were used on the convicts so Munchkin agreed to try them on. Sadly I didn't think to have him also put on the convict uniform that you can see in the left hand photo.

There were also a couple of places where you could watch black and white "movies" of what life was like in colonial times. Again, the audio was on the iPods.

More display cases of artefacts that were found throughout the Barracks after they were used to house the convicts.

This was a beautiful mural that started out in black and white and then developed colour as the pictures changed to show the passing years. It was really well done and the boys and I thought it was a beautiful addition to the museum.

After being used to house convicts, the museum was a place for unaccompanied women to live, so there is another portion of the museum devoted to that history of the building.

An example of the beds they slept on.

There are lots and lots of artefacts to inspect from when the women lived in the barracks. And yes, of course, there were still rats and mice - as you can see the rat on the right-hand side of the photos above.

While we were eating lunch outside the museum, our pastor's wife texted asking for a photo of Monkey to include in the notices and announcements the following Sunday as his birthday was coming up, so he and Monster worked together to compose the photo of him you see on the left. Our pastor's wife loved it and thought it was perfect and very creative.

As we were leaving the museum to enjoy the rest of our day wandering in the Botanical Gardens, we noticed the police were loading their horses up to go home. I asked this officer if she would allow me to take a photo of her horse and she graciously agreed.

I never tire of photographing buildings in the city. I love the contrast of St James church built during the colonial years, and the modern sky scrapers of today.

We walked past Sydney Hospital and the boys had to stop and look at the boar. Only Monster was willing to rub his nose.

Another example of old versus new.

Earlier in the year I read the fantastic book "Matthew Flinders Cat" by Bryce Courtenay and was eager to find the statue of Trim the cat on the side of Mitchell's library. So I set Monkey the task of plotting our course to find it an off we went. If you are interested in knowing more about the book just click on the title and it will take you to an Amazon link for the book.

Next we had a good look at the Public Library of New South Wales before heading across the street into the Botanical Gardens.

I was pleased that we found the gate with this fountain as it is one of my favourite entrances to the park.

The Morton Bay Fig trees in the Botanical Gardens are impressive.

We found this memorial fountain that we have never seen before.

Every year (in late June and early July) Sydney puts on a light show called Vivid and some of the displays were still waiting to be dismantled when we were there.

A couple more photos of the trees in the gardens.

High on Monster's list for the day was visiting the eel pond.

We saw ONE eel - but I'm not sure my readers will be able to find it. If you look closely just to the right of the clump of grass, you will see a brown "U" shape and that is the eel.

The bamboo groves are amazing and make the most beautiful noise when the wind blows.

A group of cormorants were perched on this tree.

The beautiful harbour...

More Vivid decorations waiting to be dismantled as we made our way around to the Opera House.

Munchkin had never seen the ships at Garden Island this close up before - he was impressed and watched them for quite awhile.

Monkey wanted his photo taken in front of the Opera House.

The beautiful and iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge - I never tire of taking photographs of this structure either.

Monkey is also interested in buildings and sky scrapers. The blue tower on the right of both of these photos is the Crown and Monkey LOVES it. So he needed photos of the building. He has requested that on our next trip to the city we visit Barangaroo and get a REALLY up close look at The Crown.

As we made our way to the train station we happened to see a man sitting with this bird. I asked if I could take a photo of the bird and he nodded yes, but then motioned to Munchkin to come over and he put the bird on his shoulder. That made the photo opportunity EXTRA special.

More pictures of The Crown - this time with Monkey in the picture as well.

Above are two photos of the harbour that Munchkin snapped on my DSLR camara...

A couple of photos I snapped using the camera on my phone just before we boarded the train. It was an AMAZING day out!!

We did some reading during our first week of the term. I've started a series of books on robots. There are ten books in the series which is perfect as the term is ten weeks long. Munchkin is enjoying reading the Word Spy books (there are two of them) independently - and it is my sneaky way of helping him learn more about grammar without it feeling like a chore to him. Finally Monkey finished another book that counts toward the Premier's Reading Challenge for this year.

On our walk to the library Thursday afternoon we found a large flock of cockatoos feasting in the grass. They are extremely used to humans so let us walk very close to them while they simply continued the business of eating.

Munchkin is always happy with the After School Activity is Lego.

Finally, Saturday morning a good friend and I decided to check out a second-hand book store we've been meaning to go to for AGES!! It did not disappoint. Despite how packed full of books all the shelves are, there is order to it, and it was reasonably easy to find things. We will definitely go back as we both saw lots of books we want to buy from the gentleman.

Something like four extra stacks of books in front of this particular bookshelf - AND some of the bookshelves were triple shelved. Then he had a back storage room absolutely packed full of books as well. I hope one day all these books find a home.