The Maritime Museum

So having waddled out of Sufalo's bakery, we faced a rainy day in Sydney; albeit with about half a pound of ricotta safely tucked away on the hips in lieu of lunch. It was so gloomy this afternoon that you couldn't really see across the harbour from one side to another, weather I've never seen before in Sydney and certainly didn't expect at this time of year.

The thing about the rain here is that once it arrives, it stays for days on end, sometimes a whole week or a fortnight. Darren has a theory it's something to do with the weather systems being completely enormous, much bigger than anything we get at home, so they cover a wider area and they take longer to move away. I don't know where he's getting his information but this is the same man who scoffs at my theory that small children need the support of properly-fitting Clarks shoes (especially around the ankle) so there's one bit of evidence I'm classing as dodgy to say the least.

As tour guide, the only thing I could come up with was a visit to the National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour, or rather, everything else I could think of revolved around browsing in shops, and that sort of thing makes Darren's eyes water.

(And at this point I'll have to add that now we've been to every single museum in Sydney, the tour itinerary has worn very thin for rainy days. Any more of this rain and it'll definitely be a punch in the wallet).

The maritime museum is one of the only places that doesn't charge an entrance fee for browsing the general exhibits. As someone who's always been bored rigid at the very mention of ships, I'm assuming that the government decided they'd never be able to get people through the doors if they charged for entry, though you do have to pay to go on board the ships and the submarine anchored outside.

Anyway, we paid to go on board the ships and ended up passing a really enjoyable three hours poking around and learning all sorts of things about ships that we didn't know before (and in my case, didn't even realise we wanted to know), like how the rivets used to be hot welded onto the iron and what the plimsole line is.

The submarine was interesting - a thirty year old decomissioned vessel that used to belong to the Australian navy; very long and thin inside and impossible to imagine sixty or so people all living aboard in such cramped conditions (I mean, when you think about submarines, you think of periscopes and that funny booping noise and you think, God, I wouldn't fancy going under the water in one of those, but you don't actually think about the practicalities of living on board one, which makes our flat seem like Windsor Castle).

But the best of the lot was the replica of Captain Cook's Endeavour, the first European ship to chart the east coast of Australia (or New Holland as it appears on the map), which was built according to detailed plans that still exist for the original 1700's Endeavour.

The new Endeavour was built in Fremantle, a harbour town just south of Perth in Western Australia (and if you ever go to Perth, Fremantle is well worth a look, if only for Miss Maud's cake shop on the main street). We were first in Fremantle in 1996, which was just after the Endeavour was built, so my Uncle Gordon had taken us to have a look at it sitting gleaming in the sunshine in the docks there. Funny therefore to see it again in Sydney, a bit like an old friend, though perhaps not quite so shiny as it was eleven years ago.

(And why is it in Sydney anyway? Why couldn't it have stayed in Freo? Because the Sydneysiders nick everything for their de facto capital, that's why).

All four of the vessels at the museum are manned by very well-informed volunteers, most of them retired professionals with an interest in history, just like the retired zoo friend volunteers at Taronga, who know every last detail about every last animal and can't wait to share it with you. And the great thing about these older people is that, unlike us, they're not in much of a hurry, so not only did they have loads to tell us about navigation and astronomy and mathematics but they had all the time in the world for us to ask questions and all the time to explain some of the finer details of life on board a ship like the Endeavour

Still, I know a bit about the local history myself.

"Do you reckon Captain Cook wore all those formal clothes all the time?" I asked one lady, "you know, even in really hot weather?"

"Oh I suppose not" she replied

"Because Governor Phillip definitely wore them when the first fleet landed in Botany Bay. I read it in The Fatal Shore" I said

"Oh I haven't read that" she replied

"Yeah well, you should, it's really interesting. And when they landed ashore, the aborigines couldn't tell whether these Europeans were male or female. The aborigines didn't wear clothes, so their sex was pretty obvious. One of the tribal elders pointed at his willy and pointed at Governor Phillip indicating he wanted to know whether he was a man or a woman"

"Really?"

"Yeah, so Phillip made one of the other sailors whip down his tweeds, you know, to show him. And the aborigines gave great shouts of astonishment and admiration" I finished, feeling smug about telling the history guide something she didn't already know.

Whether she wanted to know is a different matter, but from the look on her face I don't think it'll be in her talk any time soon.