Thursday March 4, 2010 – Beaconsfield

We decided not to go too far today. I had a sore throat and was not feeling too well. Beaconsfield was about 19km from where we were staying. It had a number of activities. After a quick stop at the post office we went to the Mine & Heritage Centre. Little did we know it would take us 2 hours to enjoy the museum and tribute centre? It was a hands on museum. You didn't just look at the stuff but actually turned knobs and handles. It was fun to watch the machines working. It was also enlighten to know how hard it was to move the mine trams by hand.

The tribute section was to three miners who were caught in a rock slide underground on April 25, 2006. Two of the three miners survived for 14 days in a 1.5 cubic meter space. The slide was caused by a mild earthquake. The miner who died was discovered 2 days into the rescue. There were written thoughts by the miners who were caught and by the rescuers and managers of the mine. Not only did this turn the community upside down but put it on the front page around the world. We did not remember hearing about the mine slide. It happened just after Mom and I had returned from our trip to Australia. The mine is still operating as an underground gold mine.

After lunch we walked around town looking at the old buildings in town. It was fun to read about the town's history as went along.

We drove up the road to Beauty Point to see Platypus House and Sea Horse World. We were just in time for the tour in the platypus house. We watched 3 platypuses (Dusk, Porky and Piccolo) swimming around. They were fun to watch. One of them was just floating around having been disturbed from sleep. Piccolo was very active and having playful fun. She was showing off for us. You never want to pick up a platypus as the males have a barb behind each hind leg that is full of poison. When pierced by this barb the pain is terrible. Nothing can ease the pain. One man who had an encounter with a male said that the pain lasted for months and he suffered nerve damage in his arm. Some platypus males fight to the death to protect their territory. Platypuses do not breed well in captivity. They are hoping that now they have a couple of females that have reached breeding age that something will happen. They also only breed every two years.

After learning about the platypus we went into the echidnas garden. There were three echidnas in the enclosure. We were able to walk among them and watch them eat. They are ant eaters with spines like a porcupine. They were fun to watch especially their tongues with the food.

We had enough time to walk next door and do the tour in the Sea Horse World. We had a great guide who kept us entertained with the sex life of the sea horse. We saw a number of different sea horses. Unlike the platypus the sea horse breeds like crazy. Every morning they can take a lot of newborn seahorses out of the breeding tanks to other tanks. Originally, this breeding was done to help save the sea horse from over fishing for Chinese medicine. However, this failed. The sea horses never got big enough. Now they are just studied so that we can learn how to preserve them at sea. When the young are around 3 months old they go to a bigger tank the staff calls primary school. Here they get to know each other. After they change colour from black to beige at about 6 months they go to the "high school" tank. Here they act just like teenagers. Even some of the males come out pregnant from this tank. About 1/3 of the seahorses die between in primary school tank and another 1/3 are lost in the high school tank. This is a natural phenomenon. In the wild this would happen with them being eaten.

When they become sexually active the male takes water into his pouch. He tries to make it as big as possible to attract a female. He also changes colour to add to the attraction. A bigger pouch means a better place to lay her eggs. When a females picks a male she get very close to him and tickles his pouch to open it up so she can deposit her eggs. This is not easy especially if the male is showing off to his mates that she had picked him. She hog ties him with her tail and drags him away to the weed where she can hopefully get him to be still enough to lay her eggs. If this does not happen she will go out looking for a new male. She will also lay her eggs in a number of different males. It was a very interesting tour. The tour ended with fish tanks with a number of different fish from the area. There were also hermit crabs, spider crabs, star fish and other see animals.

We came home with our brains full of new information which we had fun learning.