Salvador Dali is famous for painting melted clocks, but it was time that melted on Saturday night as thousands of people queued up for hours to see the Spanish surrealist master's works.
More than 15,000 people poured through the doors of the National Gallery of Victoria in the final 24 hours of Australia's first major Dali retrospective.
The exhibition was open for 30 consecutive hours to 5pm yesterday and the opening hours had been extended during the week to accommodate demand.
However, it was the Saturday night and Sunday morning timeslot that proved most popular, with extraordinary queues that did not ease up until about 8am yesterday.
The wait was typically between two and three hours, but at times up to four hours, and queues stretched along St Kilda Road.
Art lovers who were outside at midnight faced an hour-long line just to get inside the gallery, followed by lengthy queues for tickets then a further half-hour wait to get inside the exhibition space itself. Gallery staff walked along the queue outside with megaphones to warn patrons of the lengthy delays, but the main response was that the gallery was where they wanted to be.
For more, pick up a copy of today's Canberra Times
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