Yesterday we had a very interesting day in Melbourne. It is the open house weekend where some 90 buildings around Melbourne are open for tours and inspection. On the website is a Children’s Programme, and from that we chose three interesting places to have a look at.

We started with the Brain Centre at the University of Melbourne. We had a tour through the state-of-the-art research complex, starting with a short video presentation, then touring a couple of floors including some labs, and finishing with a demonstration of extracting DNA from strawberries and fluorescing bacteria (they fluoresce due to the insertion of a gene from a jellyfish into their DNA….the gene that makes the jellyfish fluoresce then also makes the bacteria fluoresce (got to love genetic engineering!)). Nathan was most impressed with a giant brain that is used for teaching purposes.

After a tasty lunch in Brunswick of Turkish food we drove to South Melbourne to visit the Australian Tapestry Workshop. We didn’t take the tour because Toby wasn’t cooperating, but we still wandered around and saw some beautiful tapestries hanging on the walls and one being made. We had seen a video of a tapestry being made at the museum recently, so it was wonderful to see it happening for real. There was also a kids activity which Nathan really enjoyed but Toby didn’t really get, where they wove their own small piece with the same woolen thread that is used in the tapestries. Nathan took some extra wool home to make another one.

From there we went to the mounted police which was also in South Melbourne. We had a tour of the stables and got to see a couple of horses being ridden around a ring practicing walking on strange objects like mattresses and walking through curtains. It was a very interesting talk, and Toby happily kept saying ‘clip clop’ and ‘neighhhhh’ while watching the horses. There were some people with video cameras videoing us at the start of our tour, and Andrew’s mum told us last night that she saw us on the channel 2 news!

So we had a fun day, with Nathan enjoying the DNA extraction at the Brain Centre and Toby enjoying the horses most.

Last weekend we went to Werribee zoo. Because we are zoo members, the kids recently got lanyards in the mail for their details (name, favourite animal and parent phone number). There were lots of kids wearing them!

We love the safari bus, and most of the photos below were taken from the bus, but before we got there we saw meerkats and the gorillas. One gorilla looked very comfortable lying on his back in the sun in a wooden shelter, but then he found somewhere else under a tree, taking his bedding with him.