Bits of ships
09/02/2006 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaThe Izzie is a creature of habit. Every Thursday we pack up the Preciousss for a visit to our favorite town. We usually potter around for an hour or two at St Brutus (which used to be a lunatic asylum and is now a cafe, museum and arts centre) followed by munchies at Angel's Waffle Cafe. After that is happy hour at the Juicy Beetroot hippy hangout, a bit of shopping and more coffee crawls until catching the 7.45 bus back to the Lair
But today we decided to be different. One big advantage of having Portkey status for the Preciousss at the Lair is no longer relying on visits to Angel's cafe for our weekly fix of updates in Cyberia. So like last week, Preciousss stayed at home. It's nice to no longer need to spend precious daylight hours lurking in Cyberia.
So first stop on arriving at Fremantle was our usual haunt. Like last week, had to go to the inner courtyard rather than the garden due to the invasion of Muggle mummies with their hordes of squealing monsters. The perfect place for squiggling.
Next stop was the post office to pay our electric bill, get more prepaid online hours and post a parcel. Izzie never seals anything until first weighing it at the counter and was most proud of her scroogie talents to come in at exactly 1,249 grams. Pure genius. One itsie bitsie teenie weenie gram more and we would have been in the 1,250 - 1,499 band.
So, today we decided that we would finally get around to putting on the tourist hat and visit the shipwreck galleries. These are about 5-10 mins walk from the post office in the west end of town. Got to thinking while walking there that the Iz has gotten into way too much of a rut and does not spend nearly enough time in this part of town most of which is owned by the university of Notre Dame. Not much going on but lots and lots of gorgeous perfectly preserved old buildings. It sort of reminds us of Lubeck which is probably our absolute favorite city of all time.
It's almost shameful to think that the Iz has been here just over 12 years and only today finally makes it inside the doors of the shipwreck galleries in spite of passing by countless times. Was amazed to discover that it was only two silver sickles to get in - in contrast to the new maritime museum that charges ten. But then again, they've got a grand yuppie wannabee Sydney Opera House building to pay for where as this one is an old store house made of limestone from the 1850s and is an artifact in its own right as well as the wrecks within. Being such an ancient serpent, we much prefer this building to the new little upstart.
Went on the guided tour at 2pm before taking a peek around on our own. At first - was just the Izzie and the tour guide but then another 4 or 5 joined.
First stop was a new creature feature - instead of showing bits and pieces of wrecks, they have now added 'The work in progress' where you get to see people actually working on restoration and stuff. The wreck in question is a converted paddle steamer called the Xanthos where they are restoring the engine which is some 130 years old. They are hoping to get the restored engine to actually work. There was a little working model as well as the real thing itself and various bits of pipes and stuff. Another part of the museum had a cannon dug up in the early 60s before modern restoration methods. It was amazing to see the sad and mangled state it was in compared to the rest of the specimens lurking in various nooks and crannies.
There's also an off limits area for staff only where they do their restoration stuff. There is a little window where you can peek inside to see the various bits and pieces.
There are a lot of relics from various Dutch wrecks but the star of the show is the Batavia which sank off the Western Australian coast near Geraldton way back in 1629.
They have restored bits of the hull set on a metal frame and it looks eerily like a dinosaur's rib cage. It is all placed on a platform of bricks which were apparently part of its cargo. Most pretty they were too. Ignorant Iz was amazed that they would transport such high weight, low value stuff such as bricks half way around the world in those days but the guide explained that they also served as ballast.
Apparently, it was the only bit of the ship's timbers that survived, probably because it got stuck under a very large pile of strange stones. Iz could not quite work out what the peculiar portico had to do with the ship. Turns out that when they rescued these stones, some one had the bright idea of going through various manuscripts and figured out that the ship was transporting the bits of a portico awaiting construction in some Dutch fortress in Batavia (present day Jakarta) so they were able to put the pieces of the jigsaw together and assembled it all in the museum.
Just could not help but be amazed how a beast of such size could be constructed almost solely of timber with barely a metal nail in sight.
Apparently, the restoration of the timber took 15 years or so. The wood had to be soaked in some sort of glueish gunge to replace the water in the waterlogged wood. Big, scary and impressive and all as it looks, was apparently only 30 tons of the 600 or so ton original.
It was quite funny when the tour guide then says about the grand portico "By the way, that's fibreglass. The original is in Geraldton where they wanted to have at least something significant from the wreck" Yesss. Izzie did wonder about the squabbles over stuff between the two museums - the one near where the wreck was actually found and the other near the metropolitan area where people were more likely to actually see it.
Funny, would have never known it was not real if she had not told us. Well, the gold galleons and other assorted coins were most certainly real as was the skeleton from one of the many murdered in this most maniacal mutiny. "Lord of the Flies" with adults as some writers have so poetically put it.
Was also a most interesting display about other Dutch wrecks and their relics as well as a potted history of the VOC. Will have to go back for a more detailed look next time to find out exactly why they went bankrupt. The guide did not know. Maybe VOC was the Enron of its day but with a much much much longer shelf life. Amazing how stuff like spices that we so much take for granted now - or hardly even notice - (But Izzie does get happy from sniffing cinammon, nutmeg and cloves) was once so so valuable that empires were founded on them. Maybe 500 years from now, archaelogists will wonder what all the fuss was about that thick black gluggy liquid known to some as Texan Tea.
But today we decided to be different. One big advantage of having Portkey status for the Preciousss at the Lair is no longer relying on visits to Angel's cafe for our weekly fix of updates in Cyberia. So like last week, Preciousss stayed at home. It's nice to no longer need to spend precious daylight hours lurking in Cyberia.
So first stop on arriving at Fremantle was our usual haunt. Like last week, had to go to the inner courtyard rather than the garden due to the invasion of Muggle mummies with their hordes of squealing monsters. The perfect place for squiggling.
Next stop was the post office to pay our electric bill, get more prepaid online hours and post a parcel. Izzie never seals anything until first weighing it at the counter and was most proud of her scroogie talents to come in at exactly 1,249 grams. Pure genius. One itsie bitsie teenie weenie gram more and we would have been in the 1,250 - 1,499 band.
So, today we decided that we would finally get around to putting on the tourist hat and visit the shipwreck galleries. These are about 5-10 mins walk from the post office in the west end of town. Got to thinking while walking there that the Iz has gotten into way too much of a rut and does not spend nearly enough time in this part of town most of which is owned by the university of Notre Dame. Not much going on but lots and lots of gorgeous perfectly preserved old buildings. It sort of reminds us of Lubeck which is probably our absolute favorite city of all time.
It's almost shameful to think that the Iz has been here just over 12 years and only today finally makes it inside the doors of the shipwreck galleries in spite of passing by countless times. Was amazed to discover that it was only two silver sickles to get in - in contrast to the new maritime museum that charges ten. But then again, they've got a grand yuppie wannabee Sydney Opera House building to pay for where as this one is an old store house made of limestone from the 1850s and is an artifact in its own right as well as the wrecks within. Being such an ancient serpent, we much prefer this building to the new little upstart.
Went on the guided tour at 2pm before taking a peek around on our own. At first - was just the Izzie and the tour guide but then another 4 or 5 joined.
First stop was a new creature feature - instead of showing bits and pieces of wrecks, they have now added 'The work in progress' where you get to see people actually working on restoration and stuff. The wreck in question is a converted paddle steamer called the Xanthos where they are restoring the engine which is some 130 years old. They are hoping to get the restored engine to actually work. There was a little working model as well as the real thing itself and various bits of pipes and stuff. Another part of the museum had a cannon dug up in the early 60s before modern restoration methods. It was amazing to see the sad and mangled state it was in compared to the rest of the specimens lurking in various nooks and crannies.
There's also an off limits area for staff only where they do their restoration stuff. There is a little window where you can peek inside to see the various bits and pieces.
There are a lot of relics from various Dutch wrecks but the star of the show is the Batavia which sank off the Western Australian coast near Geraldton way back in 1629.
They have restored bits of the hull set on a metal frame and it looks eerily like a dinosaur's rib cage. It is all placed on a platform of bricks which were apparently part of its cargo. Most pretty they were too. Ignorant Iz was amazed that they would transport such high weight, low value stuff such as bricks half way around the world in those days but the guide explained that they also served as ballast.
Apparently, it was the only bit of the ship's timbers that survived, probably because it got stuck under a very large pile of strange stones. Iz could not quite work out what the peculiar portico had to do with the ship. Turns out that when they rescued these stones, some one had the bright idea of going through various manuscripts and figured out that the ship was transporting the bits of a portico awaiting construction in some Dutch fortress in Batavia (present day Jakarta) so they were able to put the pieces of the jigsaw together and assembled it all in the museum.
Just could not help but be amazed how a beast of such size could be constructed almost solely of timber with barely a metal nail in sight.
Apparently, the restoration of the timber took 15 years or so. The wood had to be soaked in some sort of glueish gunge to replace the water in the waterlogged wood. Big, scary and impressive and all as it looks, was apparently only 30 tons of the 600 or so ton original.
It was quite funny when the tour guide then says about the grand portico "By the way, that's fibreglass. The original is in Geraldton where they wanted to have at least something significant from the wreck" Yesss. Izzie did wonder about the squabbles over stuff between the two museums - the one near where the wreck was actually found and the other near the metropolitan area where people were more likely to actually see it.
Funny, would have never known it was not real if she had not told us. Well, the gold galleons and other assorted coins were most certainly real as was the skeleton from one of the many murdered in this most maniacal mutiny. "Lord of the Flies" with adults as some writers have so poetically put it.
Was also a most interesting display about other Dutch wrecks and their relics as well as a potted history of the VOC. Will have to go back for a more detailed look next time to find out exactly why they went bankrupt. The guide did not know. Maybe VOC was the Enron of its day but with a much much much longer shelf life. Amazing how stuff like spices that we so much take for granted now - or hardly even notice - (But Izzie does get happy from sniffing cinammon, nutmeg and cloves) was once so so valuable that empires were founded on them. Maybe 500 years from now, archaelogists will wonder what all the fuss was about that thick black gluggy liquid known to some as Texan Tea.
