Aquarium Outside the aquarium a group of primary school kids sat in a circle whilst a teacher explaining the rules for good behaviour. They were on the same schedule as us, they were impossible to escape from. The children wore burgundy and grey, attached to their collars were name tags in the shape of sharks, on which were written old favourites (Matthew, Kate) or names to force individuality (Britnee, Kaleb).
The most overpowering sounds in the aquarium are the sound of children having tantrums and the regular "shhh, shhhh" of teachers. As I stared into exhibits there would be packs of kids waiting behind me, impatient. They were all arms and legs, I felt there were giant balls of limbs behind me, frustrated by the impossibility of moving me from my position. The boys exclaimed over the biggest fish, their words always preceded by an explosive "woaaah!". The girls, I noticed, weren’t so impressed by size, where the boys were enthusiastic, they were more reserved, and said instead that the largest sharks were "really fat".
Amongst the visitors I saw many different ways of understanding the aquarium. "Guts" was a woman at the Barramundi tank. The Barramundi was gigantic, I had been standing watching it through numerous sets of excited schoolboys, who made sounds of delight so violent I could only imagine each word was accompanied by a spray of spit. Guts too was concerned with saliva.
"Fish and chips" said Guts, from behind me. She was getting hungry!
"That would feed a lot of people," she said.
I can’t believe that all she was thinking about was eating this magnificent creature. She was in an aquarium, not a restaurant! "You don’t see Barramundi like that anymore," she remarked. I’m sure she doesn’t see Barramundi very much at all in suburbia. She was one of those people who likes to show their mastery over all topics by making such judgments. Guts must find driving through the country almost unbearable. I could imagine her pulling the car over to chase the steaks on legs, or try and trap a lamb roast as it gamboled over the meadow at sundown.
After the first section, with the freshwater fish and platypus enclosure (very popular, but no platypus could be seen, people were staring desperately into a giant tank of trunks and water weeds), we came upon the cafeteria, selling soft drinks, gelato, crisps, and other such refreshments. Obviously here was where parents could buy bribes for their children to get them to behave, or at least to shut them up whilst their mouths were busy chewing. Children weren’t the only ones hoeing into the snacks, beside the seal pool, and we could see a large guy in a surf T-shirt stuffing in crisps from a foil packet which looked tiny in his giant paw. He had a blank, idiotic expression, and I imagined what he was saying to his friends: "Huh, I’m gonna feed the seal a chip" etc. His hand conveyed chips from packet to mouth at a regular rate, it was like watching a machine.
You could walk down a ramp and then underneath the seal pool, to watch them from underwater. The path was a U shape, with the pool above and in the middle. When standing on one arm of the U you could see the other side of the path. People on the path looked strangely stretched and distorted. To my delight, when we were down there I saw Chips on the other side, still conveying the crisps to his mouth and crunching them up. I tried to photograph this amazing creature at feeding time, but I wasn’t quick enough with the settings on Tim’s odd Russian camera.

Tim was dismissive of the Great Barrier Reef section, he described the colourful fish as ’sluts’! He prefers a plain, honest fish, like a herring or a catfish, both of which I noticed him paying a lot of attention to. I liked the catfish also, I liked how they would run the long tendrils around their mouth over things, I wished I had such tendrils and could drape them over things. Similarly, I wished I was a stingray and I could slide over rocks covered in ticklish weed. The aquarium made me think about being in different shaped bodies, the physical sensations of being in a different form. I tried to banish junk thoughts of crappy movies where guys get stuck in dog’s bodies and get to watch women undress (which made me nervous every time my dog was around and I took off my shirt), because I wanted to focus on the idea of being a different shape. I’d have to learn how to move in my new body. Without hands, my whole body would be more receptive and sensitive. I like to imagine being a bird and having to use my beak to test things, I think of one time when I watched a bird smacking a snail’s shell against a brick to smash it and eat the snail inside. Fantastic entertainment!
One kid at the Port Jackson shark tank was saying "Michael Jackson" over and over, as if by repeating it he’d suddenly make it funny. This boy was much bigger than his classmates, later we saw them crossing the bridge to Darling Harbour for the next leg of their excursion, and watched this boy viciously kicking a bin as he ran to catch up. "ADHD," I said. "Held back a year. Other kids too scared to be mean to him. His fists are as big as their heads."

I like the quiet kids with wide wondering eyes. One boy was being carried by his grandfather, a neat man with a European accent. They were looking at the starfish, and talking quietly about them, when a group of school excursion bullies gathered around. The man pointed out to all of them that there were many more starfish in the tank than there first appeared to be, as they were still, "static" he said, in endearingly proper English. They were my favourite aquarium visitors. Respect the creatures! Don’t think of eating them or regard them as characters on a giant, liquid filled television!