#Maru's adventures down unda

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Photoset 1 from the Melbourne Museum with @captain-amaezing! 

1. Cast of Inostrancevia, a Permian gorgonopsid and a relative of ours

2. A beautiful Banded Iron Formation with pyrite. My finger there for scale.

3. Phar Lap, the famous Australian racehorse. 

4. A paper-mache(!!!) model of the human body. If that wasn’t labor intensive enough, it opens up to show the internal organs. 

5. Neoceratodus forsteri, or the Queensland lungfish. One of the few surviving lungfish, this guy is truly a living fossil. 

6. The magnificent skull of Physeter macrocephalus, or the sperm whale. 

7. The skull of Janjucetus, a stem mysticete with teeth!

8. Aboriginal sculpture of my favorite marsupial, the tassie devil.

9. A quality rancho.

10. The arching skull of the pygmy blue whale, a subspecies, Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda. 

(Part 1) (Part 2)

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Part 2 of my adventure today at the Melbourne Museum with @captain-amaezing!

1. The massive wingspan of the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus. 

2. Model of the primitive fish Arandaspis. Arandaspis was found near Uluru!

3. Schist with the biggest garnets I have ever seen.

4. Megalania, the largest squamate to ever walk the Earth. Basically a Komodo dragon on steroids. Some people still believe that Megalania still roams the Aussie outback???

5. The two-ton wombat Diprotodon. They were probably quite tasty to the Aboriginal people : ( 

6. Awesome mount of Amargasaurus! Amargasaurus is a sauropod with a set of neck spines; sauropod paleontologists debate whether the spines stood alone, or were connected by a sail (like Dimetrodon). It’s unclear what the spines/sail would have been used for.

(Part 1) (Part 2)

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Photos from around Melbourne. I loved this city and I enjoyed exploring with @captain-amaezing!

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Photos from the Healesville Sanctuary in Victoria. I loved this bushland refuge and was glad to escape the city for a day to see the Victorian countryside. They have an amazing program showcasing the parrots and birds of prey of Australia, including the wedge-tailed eagle!

1. One of my favorite mammals ever, the echidna (Tachyglossus).

2. A pic of the elusive platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus). This monotreme is in a constant state of motion, swimming and hunting. Capturing pictures was hard! 

3. A denizen of the nocturnal exhibit, the brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula). 

4. Another very special marsupial, the greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis). 

5. The skull of Thylacoleo, a rather derpy Pleistocene mammal known as the marsupial lion. 

6. An Aboriginal rendition of the platypus. Fun fact: my dad was unfamiliar with the didgeridoo and thus made the comment “I don’t get why they’re playing this goofy music”...

7. All aboard this adorable echidna train! (I love echidnas ok don’t judge.)

8. I got more quality hangout time with my favorite marsupial, the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisi). This one was named Joey! I also got to meet a little bab Tassie devil. 

9. Joey’s keeper was near the enclosure so he was very hopeful for more food. Healesville Sanctuary and Zoos Victoria are doing important work building an insurance population in Australia as the Tasmanian wild population is being ravaged by a tumor disease that spreads like a virus, and it is always fatal. The official program of the Australian government can be found here. 

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Maru is goin’ Down Under!

I will be traveling to Melbourne! I leave tomorrow and get back on the 21st. I’ve never been to Aus before and I’m very excited to meet @captain-amaezing for realz :) I have a few posts queued up while I am flying, probably will be aviation themed. 

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Pictures from the Melbourne Aquarium! The aquarium is divided up by ecozones which I thought was really cool. There were also great staff, one member spent a solid 30 minutes introducing me to all the marvelous fish of the big ocean tank! 

1. The gorgeous skin color and patterning of the Giant Cuttlefish, Sepia apama.

2. Pinjarra, the massive saltie crocodile (Crocodylus porosus). Photos do not begin to encapsulate how big Pinjarra is. He was found trapped far inland after a large flood and lived on a crocodile farm until he had some personality conflicts with the other, smaller males. Now he lives at the aquarium. 

3. Gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) zooming around in the water. 

4. The weedy seadragon, Phyllopteryx taeniolatus. Melbourne Aquarium is the only place with a successful breeding program. 

5. Another pic of my living fossil friend, the Australian lungfish! 

6. The bizarre sawfish (family Pristidae), which are not sharks but actually rays! 

7. The adorable zebra shark (Stegostoma fasciatum). I think a more appropriate name would be a leopard shark. 

8. The largest species of stingray in Aus, the smooth stingray (Dasyatis brevicaudata). They’re called this because they do not have many denticles in their skin.

9. When the jaws open wide and there’s more jaws inside, that’s a moray! I’m not sure what species these moray eels are, but they’re in the family Muraenidae. 

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Yesterday I visited Melbourne’s Immigration Museum, located in the old Customs House. It was an excellent museum-- reminded me of some of the best museums in Berlin: reflective, honest, and hopeful. It was invaluable to see the perspective of another nation that struggles with the balance of being both a nation of immigrants and a nation of indigenous peoples. 

1. the Long Room of the Customs House.

2. Portholes in the “ship” depicted dioramas of other immigrants to Aus. Here are camellias. Reason for immigration: “shipped by Wardian Case to Melbourne’s Botanic Garden”. 

3. The cat’s reason for immigration: “job opportunities as pet and hunter”.

4. The rat: “we go where we choose”.

5. The sleeping berth of an immigrants’ ship in the 1800s. 

6. The sleeping berths of a 1950s ocean liner.

7. Paintings by May Vale, the daughter of English migrants. She was one of the first Australian women to be a professional artist!

8. The sand map created by Merle and Alick. Merle was an Aboriginal woman and Alick was a 2nd generation Greek man; their wedding was very unconventional for the time. The sand map depicts how their families came together. 

9. The Immigration Museum does small, temporary exhibitions showcasing different aspects of the cultures present in Melbourne. Currently, the exhibition is about Melburnians who have descended from Ithacans. It drew parallels to the story of Odysseus. 

10. The prow of the “ship” depicting the conditions of the whalers and sealers that created the first European settlers of Aus. 

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Photos from my adventure at the Melbourne zoo with @captain-amaezing today! 

1. Ring-tailed lemur, Lemur catta

2. Asian elephants, Elephas maximus

3. African wild dogs, Lycaeon pinctus

4. Coastal taipan, Oxyuranus scutellatus 

5. Blue-winged Kookaburra, Dacelo leachii

6. Kangaroo Island Kangaroo, Macropus fuliginosus fuliginosus

7. Emu, Dromaius novaehollandiae

8. Common Wombat, Vombatus ursinus 

9. Southern Cassowary, Casuarius casuarius

and my favorite! 10. Tasmanian devil, Sarcophilis harrisii

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Warning: volume may be quite loud.

So the Australian National Aviation Museum has an old DC 9 flight simulator used to train pilots. Aerodynamic stalls are discussed frequently on Air Disastros and the show tends to downplay how jarring and alarming the stall alarm (especially the “stick shaker” is). First time I pressed that button, I about shrieked. 

(part 1) (part 2) (video)

[just-call-me-ishmael]

Because my commercial aircraft nerdiness knows no bounds, here are close ups of various instruments (some of which have featured prominently on my favorite tv series, Air Disasters). There is a cockpit on display at the Australian National Air Museum! 

(part 1) (part 2) (video)