Whydiss

The kids wanted to see the new exhibition on level three, so we paid our fees and visited the work of Ron Mueck, an Australian Sculture.

My son raced down to the business end of the sculture and annouced loudly “its a girl”.

This sculture reminded me of the first time I saw the statue of David.  The size is overwhelming and it was so life like.  This piece is called ‘Wild Man’ and looks life like except for its size.

It was timely too that my children are comfortable talking and seeing naked bodies because of books like these.  The whole gallery was packed with people of all ages and there were many children and teenagers.  Throughout the whole time we were there I was expecting inappropriate comments from within the crowd and there were none.

 

My daughter thought that this lady was an Umpa-Lumpa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

My children are well aware that they can not touch when visiting the Gallery, except my son who decided to jump over the corner of a piece and we were promptly told by a security guard that jumping in the gallery was not allowed.

These little ladies were a facination for the children and I asked them if Pa’s wife was alive would she look like one of these ladies.  They both agreed that the curly haired lady on the left looked like Nanna Norma, Pa’s wife.  It was also the shoes too, they were definately the shoes that Nanna Norma would have worn.

After leaving the Gallery we stopped by where they were making paper boats and the kids could add their boat, to the river full of boats from other children.

We were lucky that another mother helped us fold our first boat, because I was hopeless with following the photographic instruction.

We finished off our day with a visit to the Queensland State Library and I was hoping to show the children a room full of children’s books.  We caught the lift from floor 2 to floor 3 and the doors on the lift would not open.  This is the view we had from the lift, which we stopped noticing after 30 minutes.  By the time we had reached the 1 hour mark in the lift, I was starting to run out of ways to keep the children entertained,  because I had to leave my bag at the front reception, they only items I had were my camera, mobile and a small magazine.  The magazine I pulled apart and we make paper boats, paper planes, paper fans and finally tic tac toe.

It was nearly two hours before we got out of the lift and once we got out I was surprised to find out that this was the first time the lift had broken down.  The proceedures for handling the breaking down of lifts need to be over hauled and there were definate times where I was really, really concerned for our welfare. 

The security guard on the internal speaker inside the lift was great in keeping the kids and I company for the first hour, except he had to leave and attend to a wedding, so he handed us over the Ken another security guard with no sense of humor.  To prove that Ken had no sense of humor I asked my first born to tell him some knock, knock jokes.  Ken didn’t laugh at the knock, knock jokes but we sure did and so did the staff on the other side of the glass doors.  Because the lift was sound proof, we couldn’t hear them but they could hear us through the two way security phone.  Ken didn’t find our jokes funny and the staff outside our door sure looked like they were laughing right on the punch line.

Once we were let out of the lift I was greatful to the staff for breaking library rules and getting the children a drink of juice and some biscuits and a glass of water for myself.  The lovely Librarian, Nill told the children that there is over 3 million books in the library and 26 kilometers of shelves and sat with us until the library closed and walked us out.

Despite the obvious discomfort of being confined and having to wait, what seemed like forever to be release it was a fine example of how well behave the children are.  Times like these I feel overwhelmed with gratitude because I have great kids.