Only 1 week left!

I'm quite sad that I only have one week to go before I head back home. This last week is going to be really busy getting all my projects finished, putting the final touches to things. I had a good end to last week; I went out to the conservation team's comerical building in North Melbourne and was introduced to more conservation techniques. These included making-up archival boxes, mixing colours in preparation for some re-painting of art work, completing a condition report, and I also got to do some conservation a rare volume. This invovled applying heat activated tissue using a hot spatula to strengthen any weaknesses on particular pages. I really enjoyed this hands-on experience and it is definately something that I would like to do more of in the future.
My weekend started on Friday as I met Helen Arnoldi (my overall supervisor here) at the Zoo. We had a lovely day there and afterwards Helen kindly invited me back to her home for dinner. Great food and great company! On Saturday I visited Old Melbourne Gaol, a very spooky place, but with lots of interesting information about crime and punishment in early Melbourne as well as the story of Ned Kelly shown alongside his death mask. To make the most of the lovely sunny weather (not to make you Brits jealous or anything!) I went to the Botanical Gardens in South Melbourne today. I really enjoyed seeing all the different types of trees, flowers and birds that we don't get in Britain and I had a lovely afternoon tea (complete with scone with jam and cream!) by the lake. I'm looking forward to my visit to the Grainger Museum tomorrow and also seeing Emma Neale again this week (a Melbourne winner of this award who I saw in Birmingham in November 2012).

Conserving a rare volume using heat activated tissue

View of the lake at the Botanical Gardens