Power House Text

Combine with pics later.

Decided to drive. Megan wanted to buy James & Kay a present from the Macquarie ctr. This is a huge shopping ctr.  We found a car park easily. At the time i did not appreciate how lucky we were. 

Finding a present was much harder.  We wanted to get a large platter for pavlovas and a outdoor game like badminton that one can play when visiting a park. Eventually we gave up but miraculously we managed to locate both presents as we searched for the exit.

As we traversed the car park I realised we had come just in time. It was full.  Eagle eyes followed us and the competition was on for our spot.

Noon and we finally made it to the car park.  Walked to the Aquarium. The line was huge. After speaking to several attendants we established the ticket wait was about 2hrs but that by 4pm the queue would be down to about 5 minutes.

We trudged back to the Power House Museum.  We had a general admission discount voucher. I did not really want to see the circus exhibit that was not covered by the voucher anyway. The lady on the till kindly charged only Megan. The rest of us got in for free.

While Megan, Dan & Jemma went to the circus exhibit, Chris and I looked at the rest of the exhibits.

Lots of steam engines.  Really good although one always wants to climb on them.

Steam punk sounds like a wonderful idea so long as it comes with mobile broadband, GPS and most importantly modern medicine.

A rocket engine from a saturn 5 rocket. This is a model "F1". Each of these babies generates more thrust than all 3 engines on the space shuttle and there are 5 of them on a saturn 5.

An exhibit called "Interface" looked at the development of the man machine interface. Plenty of Apple influence with a real Apple 1 on display.  Olavetti also featured. Some video of an early mouse that had two wheels at right angles on its base so you had to use it on just the right surface.

Chris and I took time out for a coffee and that revitalized us for the second half.

The final event was watching a scaled down replica of a famous strasburg clock do its thing. Interesting to note that  the original clock was placed in a church and shows the planets circling the sun.  All mechanically driven of course.

Then walked toward the Aquarium. Almost no line. I was not hanging out for the Aquarium so Megan lined up with Dan & Jem.  Chris and I are sitting in the cafe playing on our phones. Interesting the place closes at 7pm but the cafe closes at 4:30.  To me the whole place is very touristy commercial and they push large numbers through and once they don't have big queues then they close.