The Flemington Reading and Writing Program had an excursion to visit the Immigration Museum on the 15^th of September 2000. Three of our classes joined together to visit it.

The Immigration Museum is located in the centre of the city of Melbourne at 400 Flinders Street, opposite the Yarra River. It originally was the Old Customs House for the Port of Melbourne.

When I arrived at the museum, I stood out the front of the building and saw that it was a large, tall, cream coloured building. My first impression was that it could be one of Melbourne’s finest 19^th century buildings. This historic and architecturally significant building gives people an unforgettable impression.

I walked into it and met the other students and our teachers Jan and Kay. At ten o’clock a guide, who was a nice girl from an Italian background, met us to take us to the Resource Centre. In this place, you can research your family background, and access a growing library on subjects such as cultural heritage and immigration.

The archives have very detailed information, such as dates of departures and arrivals, the port, and passenger listings. One of our students, Aldo, is a migrant from Italy. He came here during the 1950’s. When he told the guide his date of arrival, "maybe 1953", and the name of the ship, the guide went through the internet site and found out he actually came here in 1955 because there was a passenger list with his name on it! When I heard this, I was very proud of the archives which were kept so well, due to my background in this area in my country China.

After that we followed the guide to go upstairs, which is a ceremonial staircase to the first floor. This section is divided into three sections with three themes: Leaving, Arriving, Settling.

This first area, Leaving, used moving images, old films, and voices to tell us what made people leave their home countries, and travel thousands of miles to live in Australia. In many cases people left because of war. Some left for human rights reasons, because of and for love, job opportunities and family reunions and a better life, like me.

In the second section, Arriving, they used real materials like photos and personal items that people brought with them. Sometimes people could only bring a few things with them if they had to leave in a hurry. There were musical instruments, jewellery, a child’s hair brush, all kinds of things. It was sad to see how little people had when they arrived here.

The third section, Settling, was very interesting because there were real stories, using writing and photos to tell the stories of real immigrants lives, and what they did when they settled here. There was the story of the Baillieu Myer migrant from Russia who started a small retail business in Geelong and gradually became one of the most famous department stores in Australia.

Another thing, I was very interested in was an old advertisement in England. It said. "Welcome to migrate to Australia. We provide a free travel ticket and land." At time Australia needed more people to come here to live and work here.

There is another section which is about the history of the Customs House. It showed how important a role it was in Victoria’s economic, maritime and immigration history.

Then there is a beautiful big room with Ionic cream coloured columns with very high ceilings. We were told the whole building was built in a time when Melbourne was very prosperous from the goldfields in 1860’s. Now in this big room is a life size model of a section of a ship which showed us a history of immigration to Australia. People came out here on ships in very small places on the ships, not much privacy. We climbed aboard and explored the sensation of ship travel. Aldo told me, it really looked like the ship he came on to Australia. He asked me "Do you feel the ship moving?" It really reminded him about when he came to Australia.