Melbourne and the last day in Oz

Besides trams zipping every which way, Melbourne is pretty much like Sydney or the other cities we’ve seen. I’m sure a Melbournite or Sydneysider would gasp to hear that, but eh, we’re only here for two days. Haven’t had time to really get to know the place.

We found a light lunch at a pub, where we split an order of nachos. Note: nachos in foreign countries are not necessarily tasty. Then we walked over to the Carlton Gardens and Exhibition Hall, a pretty relic from some World’s Fair back in the nineteenth century. The Exhibition Hall itself was closed, though we did poke around the adjacent Melbourne Museum, which was having a show of unusual furniture. For dinner we had Chinese food and for the second time in three days, our waiter spilled a full glass of liquid on the table. (This time it was water, not red wine; and hit the table, not either of us. Whew.)

Sunday, we had breakfast at the café in the hotel (MB discovered she likes eggs benedict) and hopped the free circular tram around to the south side of downtown, home of Federation Square and the Australian Center for the Moving Image. It was hosting a big retrospective, “Pixar: The First 20 Years.”

Pixar is American as apple pie, but it was either that or BodyWorks, and we decided on the option that didn’t involve human corpses on display.

This was another high point of the trip. They prohibited all photography, which was like torture. The collection included everything from the first sketches of the Pixar lamp, “Luxo,” to clay models of the entire Incredibles family. You don’t realize how much effort these folks put into their movies until you see their production design: one sketch of Sully from Monsters Inc. broke down the different hair types all over his body and how each section would react to wind and water.

(Fun fact: Nemo’s anenome home in “Finding Nemo” is actually just a small bunch of Sully’s hair made thicker and more anenome-looking.)

The best part of the exhibit, I doubt I’ll be able to properly describe. It was a zoetrope, which can mean any device that displays static images rapidly enough to create animation. In this case, the zoetrope was a large circular platform, about seven feet across, with a couple of hundred Pixar “action figures” arranged in a repeating formation. The zoetrope spun up, and the whole platform began spinning around rapidly. Then they cut the lights and flicked on the strobe lights, and like frickin magic, you were looking at animated figures right in front of you. It was a mind-boggling thing. I want to buy one for the home. Maybe I can find a picture online or something.

Having gotten our Pixar fix for the day (sort of - we were tempted to go see Ratatouille), we wandered a bit through Federation Square and downtown, then headed back north to the State Library of Victoria. This impressive building has an enormous central reading room and is the proud displayer of Ned Kelly’s armor. (Ned was apparently some anti-government outlaw who gained some popularity while on the lam, and was captured wearing a ridiculous homemade suit of armor that looks straight out of Monty Python.) We also checked out a portraiture exhibit with presidents, musicians, actors, and other Aussie and US celebrities. Jonathan Ive even had a picture, for those Apple geeks in the audience.

Then we headed back to the hotel and ironed our nice clothes as best as possible for the evening’s ballet performance of “The Nutcracker.” At the Arts Centre, we experienced our biggest heart attack since losing MB’s bag in Sydney when the ticket lady couldn’t find any purchased tickets for Miller. Milliseconds before MB burst into tears, she finally found them under Whitmire. Whew.

The ballet was nice. The Nutcracker has so many famous songs (err, themes?) that it’s almost like a Greatest Hits compilation. And the dancing was good, though the rat king stepped on his own tail right during his big introductory dance and when WHAP. (He popped up and the song continued.)

Then it was time for our final dinner in Australia, which naturally would be at a big frou frou restaurant. Rockpool Melbourne, in this case. We drank sparkling wine (maybe a bit too much) and enjoyed steaks and a muy rich dessert along the water line.

We still had $60 in Australian cash, so as we walked out of the restaurant we decided to blow it at the adjacent casino. Didn’t take long. We don’t know much about roulette, maybe.

Then it was to bed for the final time on Australian soil. The trip home, as exciting as it seemed, would be something of an ordeal.