Melbourne’s living museum of the west was not what I had in mind. I expected a huge museum with fancy architecture and design. However, this museum, though simple, held historic artifacts that other museums could only dream of having because the museum itself is an artifact. An artifact that didn’t present many objects as other museums do, but it carried deep within its walls the untold stories of people. It is the first and only ecomuseum in Australia with historic geology. I understood the term “ecomuseum” better when we were shown around the museum; we saw the river that once disposed of dead sheep as well as the barbeque place that was made of bluestone by the factory workers. I think what stood to me the most is the ‘lipsticks in bullets’ made by women working at the neighbouring ammunition factory. It shows the utter bizarreness of humanity and my group was keen on finding the story behind it.

However, considering the limited time we had, I suggested to my group that we do an unboxing documentary to which they agreed to. while on tour, it was mentioned that workers from nearby factories gave the museum boxes that they believed are too valuable to be thrown away, which piqued my interest. I admit I might have had an ulterior motive for suggesting the unboxing idea, which was mostly to feed my intense curiosity of the items they’re holding. Fortunately, we had time to pick a box and look at its items, and they were items that I’m certain none of us had seen before exciting us even further to commit to this idea.

-Anhar Al-Shameri