Wednesday, June 29th and Thursday, June 30th, 2011
Wednesday morning I got up moderately early in order to make my way to the Hills north of Perth where Scott's parent's make their home. I got some wonderful directions from Arwen and then started to make my way. Arwen gives very good directions but I'm not always very good at following them so got a little lost, but that's ok. It gave me a chance to check out a few other little places along the way.
Eventually I found the old Norton Homestead and Rod (that's Scott's Dad) was there to meet me with tea and cookies. We were able to have a great chat before Disha (that's Scott's Mom) got home from work. Before I go much farther I must say that I did not take any pictures which I regret because they have a great house, with a great view and some great gardens.
We spent the evening taking a great walk, and having a great dinner and sharing some great conversation. My visit was a little too short, but I guess it just gives me an excuse to head back there sometime.
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
Thursday morning I made my way back into Perth to check out a few things. I only had the one day to check things out (Friday I would be heading North) so I had to narrow down the choices to things I really wanted to see. I decided that my first stop had to be at Parliament House. I'd visited every other one in the country, it just wouldn't have been right for me to skip this one.
The back side of Parliament House. It was a little hard to get this picture because it was bucketing down rain by the time I got here. It was raining so hard that when I walked out here, my pants got totally soaked, so I went back to my car, changed my pants and then waited for the rain to stop before I headed back in.
Normally better prepared, I wandered in to see if I could take a tour....only to learn that I missed the only tour of the week (it left at 1030 and I was there at 1100) so I couldn't wander around and take any pictures or learn any interesting history about the building (original construction took place between 1902 and 1904). However, the Senate was sitting so I took a few minutes (ok, an hour) to see what they were discussing. Interestingly enough, they were discussing the state funding in the Busselton area including the lack of funding of the local hospital.
The front side of Parliament House. I think I like the other side better.
Once the Senate broke for lunch I decided I would head to my accommodation and drop off my bags before taking my rental car back. From there I was on foot. Perth is a pretty walkable city and everything I wanted to see was on the way back to my hotel so it worked out good.
Government House. Sits right in downtown Perth just off the river. Sits on some huge park lands, which actually was pretty easy to access. Kind of surprised me.
Look kangaroos!!! They're everywhere.
Looking down St. George Terrace. I love old buildings. Now this one is just a store and a post office and probably a few other things. I like the old clock on it.
From there I made my way over to a couple museums. My first stop was at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Coin donation entry fee only I found some very interesting pieces in this place. Here's a look.
This was one of three pieces that make up Queensland born artist, Vernon Ah Kee's "Born in this Skin".
This is "John Bulun Bulun" by Lin Onus of Melbourne.
This one really caught my attention. It takes up an entire wall. This is "White Squad III" by Chicago born artist Leon Golub (1922-2004).
This one also caught my eye. This is "The Pay-Back" by Perth born artist Julie (Yaminga) Dowling. From the Stolen Generation, Julie has begun to use her art to reveal the lived experience of her and many others.
You can see a few different pieces here. The white statue is Jean Arp's "Torso of a Giant". The black statue is Henry Moore's " Reclining Figure". The large picture above "Reclining Figure" is Charles Blackman's "Triptych Alice".
I love this one. This is "Secretary" by Allen Jones of England. She has nice boots.
This is a picture of a picture. I had to take it because I have driven by signs like this in the USA and also found them interesting. Graham Miller had a collection of photographs that he took while travelling across America. This one was taken at a gas station in Fredonia Arizona.
This one is "Nyoongar Dreaming" by Perth born artist Christopher Pease.
This is "Just One More Smoke" by Senior High School Student Ben Ee. It was part of an exhibit by artists from last year's Year 12 students.
From the art gallery I made my way across the courtyard to the Museum of Western Australia. Free to visit it was also a great place to spend a few hours.....especially since it started raining again.
If Debi and I had to share a display in a museum, this would be it. In case you can't see why, on the one side, nothing but shoes. On the other side, nothing but cameras. I'll leave it to you to decide which side belongs to who.
The museum had all the usual sections about the history of the Europeans settlers and the natural history of the area but I wandered quickly through it and made my way to a section called "Katta Djinoong - First Peoples of Western Australia" all about the history of the aboriginal people in the area. The section gave lots of accounts of the history of aboriginals in the area. Like most exhibits with images of aboriginal people, I wasn't allowed to take any pictures but I could certainly take back some of the stories.
Stories like it was believed that half-caste children (those of mixed ethnicity) were considered to be intellectually above the aborigine child so it was the State's "duty" to given them the best opportunities. This was the reasoning behind stealing half-caste children and placing them in religious missions for schooling.
Or the idea that Aboriginal mothers would soon forget children who were removed so it was not seen as doing any harm.
Or that Aboriginals followed rules that controlled how they interacted with each other. It meant that they could not always enter all land or use all the resources. This all depended on what Country they belonged to. When Europeans arrived, they had no understanding of this and simply put up their fences and houses and tried to control what they made no attempt to understand.
Of course none of these are really new stories and you will learn similar things most places that colonization occurred but it is still always interesting to me.
I had to embed the video of this movie trailer. It goes with the video below. This movie was originally a Musical written by Jimmy Chi and was the first Aboriginal musical. Jimmy was born to a Chinese/Japanese/Anglo-Australian father and a Scots/Bardi Aboriginal mother and the musical is slightly autobiographical. It was a hit at the Festival of Perth in 1990 and went on to tour Australia extensively. The film was released in Australia in January 2010 and is one of the most successful Australian movies of all time.
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