Melbourne day 8 - Polly Woodside and HMAS Castlemaine historical ships

Our final full day in Melbourne and today Julianne is going to rest and recover while the boys and I jumped in the car with Robin navigating again to visit several historical ships.

The Polly Woodside

First up is the Polly Woodside from 1885, one of the last tall sailing ships ever built just as steam engine ships were really beginning to take off so she struggled to make a profit.

Again Robin did some excellent navigation in the car, especially as we were heading right into the middle of Melbourne City this time with lots of large motorways, confusing roads and trams as well.

I found a good car park on the side of the road which was completely free for 3 hours and only a short walk to the Polly Woodside which was nice.

We arrived at the Polly Woodside just as a kids’ tour was about to start, so we spent 45 minutes learning about the ship on a tour aimed for young Luke for a change which was really great and he really enjoyed it.

Luke on his tour of the Polly Woodside

Robin as normal was not keen on joining in and just watched. Luke had to explore, find things, ring the ship bell and even got to swab the decks.

Luke swabbing the decks.

We learnt how the ship had a small crew of only around 16 people, most of whom lived in a cabin on the deck as the hold was full of cargo and the stern was where the officers lived.

The Polly Woodside was clearly designed to run as cheap as possible with a small crew and no coal was required for there were no engine’s but her smaller size and slower speed just made her non-economical.

We then spent time on our own exploring the attached museum and re-exploring the ship. Luke then got to experience his first lucky dip, and he got a pirate slinky which he liked.

We then had lunch before heading back to the car for Robin to navigate us to Williamstown so we could visit the HMAS Castlemaine, an Australian built WW2 navy minesweeper. Parking was a harder to find as it was now 1pm so later in the day with more people up and about but eventually I found a free all Day Park only a 10 minute walk from the ship.

HMAS Castlemaine

We spent the afternoon exploring this WW2 warship, going up and down ladders and Luke discovered that the guns still rotated which was a popular activity.

On leaving the HMAS Castlemaine the rains opened up, and clever eagle eyed Robin found us a small place for us to hide for a few minutes as a small but strong rain shower thundered around us.

Afterwards we headed back to the car and we back to Luke’s house, where we settled in to watch the rugby world cup quarter finals, first up the Australia vs England with big Luke supporting Australia and Robin supporting England which is where he was born, with England clearly winning.

Then it was time to watch the All Blacks taking on Ireland, I was a little concerned about this game but things went well with the All Blacks winning easily. It was a late night for Robin watching both games finishing around 11-30pm, considering this is 1-30am NZ time, and tomorrow we fly back to Auckland. I was hoping he could have an early night to prepare for the flight and jet-lag, but with the Rugby this was not going to happen.