Museum sights in New South Wales
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Australian Fossil & Mineral Museum
See Tyrannosaurus rex, Australia's only complete skeleton. You'll also see the internationally renowned Somerville Collection and over 6000 fossils from every period of the earth's history. It's fantastic.
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Powerhouse Museum
A short walk from Darling Harbour, Sydney’s most kid-focused museum whirs away inside the former power station for Sydney’s defunct tram network. High-voltage interactive demonstrations wow school groups with the low-down on how lightning strikes, magnets grab and engines growl. Look out for the Strasburg Clock replica on level three and the mad scientist experimentation stuff on level one.
Grab a map of the museum once you're inside, and a free copy of the Daily Telegraph on your way out. Good disabled access.
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Newcastle Regional Museum
Opened in May 2011 to great fanfare, the city's flagship museum occupies the restored Honeysuckle rail workshops on the foreshore and focuses on the people, activities and places of the Hunter region.
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Australian National Maritime Museum
Beneath an Utzon-like roof (a low-rent Opera House?), the Maritime Museum sails through Australia’s inextricable relationship with the sea. Exhibitions range from Aboriginal canoes to surf culture to the navy. There are free tours every day and kids' activities on Sundays.
The ‘big ticket’ (adult/child $25/10) includes the cost of touring the vessels moored outside, including the submarine HMAS Onslow, the destroyer HMAS Vampire and an 1874 square rigger, the James Craig. Normally a replica of James Cook’s Endeavour also drops anchor.
Outside, the austere 100m-long Welcome Wall honours Sydney’s migrants, allowing families to inscribe names and register their…
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Sydney Jewish Museum
Created as a memorial to the Holocaust, the Sydney Jewish Museum examines Australian Jewish history, culture and tradition from the time of the First Fleet (which included 16 known Jews) to the present day, along with the history of Judaism in general. Video testimony and touch-screen computers are used to good effect. The sobering Holocaust section includes a moving Children’s Memorial.
Allow at least two hours to take it all in. Free 45-minute tours leave at noon on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.
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Museum of Sydney
Built on the site of Sydney’s first (and infamously pungent) Government House, the MoS is a fragmented, story-telling museum using state-of-the-art installations to explore the city’s people, places, cultures and evolution. The history of the indigenous Eora people is highlighted – touching on the millennia of continuous occupation of this place. Be sure to open some of the many stainless-steel and glass drawers (they close themselves).
In the forecourt, check out the disarming Edge of Trees sculpture by Janet Laurence and Fiona Foley. There’s a cool cafe too.
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Hyde Park Barracks
Convict architect Francis Greenway designed this squarish, decorously Georgian structure (1819) as convict quarters. It later became an immigration depot, a women’s asylum and a law court. These days it’s a fascinating (if not entirely cheerful) museum, focusing on the barracks’ history and the archaeological efforts that helped uncover it.
In 2010 it was one of the Australian convict sites to be inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage List. Inside you can learn about the offences for which convicts were transported to Australia, some of which seem astoundingly petty today.
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Susannah Place Museum
Dating from 1844, the claustrophobic Susannah Pl is a diminutive terrace of tiny houses with a tiny shop selling tiny historical wares. My, haven’t we grown? In the backyard, check out how generations of working-class Rocks women cooked and laundered their clothes in a wood-fired copper urn (near the outdoor dunny). Admission is by way of guided tour.
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NSW Toy & Railway Museum & Leuralla Gardens
The NSW Toy & Railway Museum & Leuralla Gardens is an art-deco mansion set amid 4.9 misty hectares of handsome English gardens. The house is a memorial to HV ‘Doc’ Evatt, a former Australian Labor Party leader and the first UN president. Kids love the toy and model-railway museum (everything from Barbie to Bob the Builder). Make sure you cross the road to check out the awesome valley view.
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Australian Museum
This natural-history museum, established just 40 years after the First Fleet dropped anchor, strives to shrug off its museum-that-should-be-in-a-museum feel. Hence dusty taxidermy has been interspersed with video projections and a terrarium with live snakes, while dinosaur skeletons cosy up to life-size re-creations.
There are also interesting displays on extinct megafauna (giant wombats – simultaneously cuddly and terrifying), and a sad 'where are they now' exhibit featuring stuffed remains and video footage of recently extinct species.
Yet it's the most old-fashioned section that is arguably the most interesting – the large collection of crystals and precious stones.…
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Outback Centre
A mixture of kitsch and cultural, this is a combination of souvenir store, performance space and art gallery. You'll find woomeras (spear-throwers), kalis (jumbo-sized boomerangs), musical clap sticks and bullroarers (ceremonial musical instruments). The highlight, hidden out back, is Australia's Outback Gallery. A free 'Sounds of the Outback' didgeridoo performance takes place at 13:00, 15:00 and 17:00 daily.
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Western Plains Cultural Centre
Incorporating Dubbo Regional Museum and Gallery, the cultural centre is housed in a swanky architectural space cleverly incorporating the main hall of Dubbo's former high school. The combination befits the centre's exhibitions, both contemporary and historic. There's an innovative dedicated children's gallery, so mums and dads can wander the gallery sans sleeve-tugging.
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Nicholson Museum
Within the University of Sydney's quadrangle, this museum is a must-see for ancient-history geeks. Inside is an amazing accumulation of Greek, Roman, Cypriot, Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities, including Padiashaikhet the mummy. It was founded in 1860 by orphan-made-good Sir Charles Nicholson, a key figure in the establishment of both the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum.
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May Gibbs’ Nutcote
Spanish Mission–style Nutcote (1925) is the former home of much-loved Australian children’s author May Gibbs, who wrote Snugglepot & Cuddlepie. It’s now restored to its 1930s glory and houses a museum devoted to her life and work. Cheery volunteer guides will show you around, and there are beautiful gardens, a tearoom and a gift shop. It’s a five-minute walk from the wharf.
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La Perouse Museum & Visitors Centre
La Perouse, named after a French explorer, also features a monument to him, built in 1828 by French sailors. You can also visit the fabulous La Perouse Museum & Visitors Centre housed inside the old cable station (1882). The centre has relics from La Perouse’s many expeditions, an interesting Aboriginal gallery and changing exhibitions on local history and environment.
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Norman Lindsay Gallery & Museum
Celebrated artist, author and bon vivant Norman Lindsay, famed for his saucy artworks, lived in Faulconbridge from 1912 until his death in 1969. His home and studio are now the Norman Lindsay Gallery & Museum, which holds a significant collection of his paintings, watercolours, drawings and sculptures. The fabulous Lindsay’s Café is here, too.
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Wetlands Centre Australia
The Wetlands Centre Australia was born out of a desperate bid to stop the highway storming through the guts of this former rubbish tip. Now it’s 45 hectares of swampy wonderland, home to over 250 wildlife species. Mosquitoes are plentiful, so you’d best keep on walking, cycling or canoeing. The centre is a short walk from Sandgate train station.
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Rail Heritage Centre
Sydney’s main railway station was built in 1906 on top of an old convent and cemetery (watch out for ghosts). The 75m Gothic clock tower was added 15 years later. It houses the Rail Heritage Centre.
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Justice & Police Museum
In the old Water Police Station (1858), this mildly unnerving museum mimics a late-19th-century police station and court. Focusing on disreputable activities, exhibits include weapons, butt-ugly mugshots, forensic evidence from Sydney’s most heinous crimes and at least two stuffed dogs. Wheelchair access to the ground floor only.
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The Rocks Discovery Museum
Divided into four chronological displays – Warrane (pre-1788), Colony (1788–1820), Port (1820–1900) and Transformations (1900 to the present) – this excellent museum digs deep into The Rocks’ history and leads you on an artefact-rich tour. Sensitive attention is given to The Rocks’ original inhabitants, the Cadigal people.
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Australian Country Music Foundation
If the names Tex Morton, Buddy Williams and Smoky Dawson mean anything to you, then this will too. This is a country-music great Hall of Fame (in the making) with photographs, historic video and film footage, music and souvenirs.
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Motorcycle Museum
Containing three million bucks worth of bikes, Motorcycle Museum memorabilia has been collected by none other than the owner of the Quality Powerhouse Hotel next door. Three cheers for capitalism. There's not much floor space left, not even for the humble Norton 500.
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Railway, Mineral & Train Museum
There is more local history at the Railway, Mineral & Train Museum. The museum is in the Silverton Tramway Company's old station. The tramway was a private railway running between Cockburn (SA) and Broken Hill via Silverton until 1970.
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Naval & Maritime Museum
Behind the information centre, this museum is where you will find the amazing remains of a balsawood raft that drifted across the Pacific from Ecuador as part of the Las Balsas expedition in 1973.
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Museum of the Riverina
The museum operates from both the Civic Centre and the Botanic Gardens; the latter site focuses on Wagga's people, places and events and includes a Sporting Hall of Fame. FYI many famous AFL players come from Wagga.
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