Museum sights in Australia
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Powerhouse Museum
A short walk from Darling Harbour, Sydney’s hippest and most kid-focused museum whirrs 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 located on level four and a guitar once owned by AC/DC’s Angus Young on level two. Grab a map of the museum once you’re inside (you’ll need it), and a free copy of the Sydney Morning Herald on your way out. Disabled access is good.
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Johnston Collection
The collection of sharp-eyed antique dealer William Johnston is on show in this characteristic East Melbourne mansion. Rooms are decorated in an English country-house style, and also highlight specific interior-decorating fashions from last century – almost as fascinating as the pieces themselves. Visits come with a sense of mystique; for privacy reasons, you need to book a tour and be picked up from the nearby Hilton on the Park rather than just rocking up to the door. Tours depart three times daily; phone to reserve a place.
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Melbourne Museum
This confident postmodern exhibition space mixes old-style object displays with themed interactive display areas. The museum's reach is almost too broad to be cohesive, but it provides a grand sweep of Victoria's natural and cultural histories. Walk through the reconstructed laneway lives of the 1800s or become immersed in the legend of champion racehorse Phar Lap. Bunjilaka, on the ground floor, presents Indigenous stories and history told through objects and Aboriginal voices. There's also an open-air forest atrium featuring Victorian plants and animals and an Imax cinema next door.
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Aviation Museum
Darwin’s aviation museum, about 10km from the centre, is one for military aircraft nuts. The centrepiece is a mammoth B52 bomber, one of only a few of its kind displayed outside the USA, which has somehow been squeezed inside. It dwarfs the other aircraft, which include a Japanese Zero fighter shot down in 1942 and the remains of an RAAF Mirage jet that crashed in a nearby swamp. Free guided tours commence at 10am and 2pm.
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Museum of Contemporary Art
A slice of Gotham City on Circular Quay West, the stately art-deco MCA has been raising even the most open-minded Sydney eyebrows since 1991. Constantly changing controversial exhibitions from Australia and overseas range from the incredibly hip to in-your-face, sexually explicit and profoundly disturbing. Impressive. There’s a cool cafe and a museum shop here, too.
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Sciencentre
Often packed with school kids is the Queensland Museum's very fun Sciencentre, a hands-on science exhibit with interactive displays and optical illusions. Blast out of the blocks and check your speed in the 10m interactive dash or make your own whirlpool at the water world exhibits – it's an educational funhouse.
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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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Migration Museum
This engaging social-history museum tells the story of the many migrants who have made SA their home. The museum has info on 100-plus nationalities (as opposed to individuals) in its database, along with some poignant personal stories.
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Old Post Office
The Old Post Office built in 1870, was the childhood home of Henry Handel Richardson. She (yes, she!) writes about it in her autobiography, Myself When Young (1950).
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National Holden Museum
One for the rev-heads, this museum is devoted to Australia’s four-wheeled icon. There’s over 40 vehicles, from FJ to Monaro, as well as racing footage and photos.
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Encounter Coast Discovery Centre
The Encounter Coast Discovery Centre has interesting displays exploring local history from pre-European times to around 1900.
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Sydney Observatory
Built in the 1850s, Sydney’s copper-domed, Italianate observatory squats atop Observatory Hill, overlooking Millers Point and the harbour. Studded with huge Moreton Bay fig trees, the grassy hilltop buzzes with sweaty hill-climbing joggers, lunchtime CBD escapees and travellers taking time out from The Rocks below. The hill was the site of the colony’s first windmill (1796), which ground wheat until someone stole its canvas sails and the structure collapsed. Inside is a collection of vintage apparatus, including Australia’s oldest working telescope (1874). Also on offer are AV displays, an interactive Australian Astronomy exhibition of Aboriginal sky stories and modern …
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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 and the Navy. You can almost taste the salt. Free tours happen half-hourly from 10am to 2.30pm; kids’ activities happen on Sundays between 11am and 3pm. Outside, the austere 100m-long Welcome Wall honours Sydney’s migrants, allowing families to inscribe names and register their history on the database. Entry to the permanent indoor collection is free; the cost of touring the vessels moored outside varies, with the ‘big ticket’ (adult/child/family $30/16/65) covering the subm…
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War Memorial
In a stately position, overlooking Anzac Pde and Lake Burley Griffin, the magnificent war memorial is one of the finest museums in the country. This genuinely moving memorial provides a fascinating insight into how battle forged Australia’s national identity, with an enormous collection of pictures, dioramas, relics and exhibitions that detail and humanise wartime events. For military-history fans, there’s also plenty of weaponry and uniforms – most of the heavy machinery is arrayed in Anzac Hall, which features an impressive sound-and-light show. Entombed among the mosaics of the Hall of Memory is the Unknown Australian Soldier, whose remains were returned from a W…
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Western Australian Museum – Kalgoorlie-Boulder
The impressive Ivanhoe-mine head frame marks the entrance to this excellent social-history museum. A lift takes you to the top, where you can peer out over the city and mines. In case you forget the reason all of this exists, an underground vault displays giant nuggets and gold bars. There's also a fantastic collection of trade-union banners and relocated historic buildings, including a miner's cottage and mobile police station (attached to a train). Half-hour guided tours start at 11am.
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Living Museum
This charming museum focuses on the unique history of the area, home to a high proportion of migrants and traditionally working class. The museum promotes local participation in its programme of documenting and interpreting the area's social, industrial and environmental history. It keeps 400 oral histories on various topics, such as migration, the role of women, and the meat industry. Old-school exhibits of photographs, maps, drawings and text thumbtacked to a display board are highly accessible. It's set in the grounds of Pipemakers Park, featuring a Discovery Park, wetlands area and indigenous gardens, which re-create the landscape of the basalt plains and valley as it…
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National Museum of Australia
This museum is one big abstract Australian storybook. Using creativity, controversy, humour and self- contradiction, the National Museum dismantles national identity and in the process provokes visitors to come up with ideas of their own. There are lots of attendants on hand to help you navigate exhibitions on environmental change, Indigenous culture, national icons and more, and you can take one-hour guided tours. Don't miss the introductory film, shown in a small rotating theatre at the start of the exhibition rooms, which is an enjoyable audiovisual taste of the range of artefacts on show and how they form part of Australia's national identity.
Bus 34 runs here. There's…
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Bradman Collection
Cricket fans can pour over the personal items of cricket legend Sir Donald Bradman at the Bradman Collection. Simple timelines set out the story of the genius cricketer clearly and succinctly, and fans will fairly wet themselves over this collection of memorabilia donated by 'the Don' himself before he died. The exhibition is housed in the magnificent, historic 1861 South Australian Institute building, part of the State Library of SA precinct.
Continue the theme north of the Torrens River at the Adelaide Oval (King William Rd, North Adelaide), where a statue of the Don graces this most picturesque of Test cricket grounds.
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Museum of Central Australia
The natural history collection at this compact museum recalls the days of megafauna − when hippo-sized wombats and 3m-tall flightless birds roamed the land. Among the geological displays are meteorite fragments and fossils. There's a free audio tour, narrated by a palaeontologist, which helps bring the exhibition to life.
There's also a display on the work of Professor TGH Strehlow, a linguist and anthropologist born at the Hermannsburg Mission among the Arrernte people. During his lifetime he gathered one of the world's most documented collections of Australian Aboriginal artefacts, songs, genealogies, film and sound recordings. It's upstairs in the Strehlow Research Ce…
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School of the Air
Started in 1951, this was the first school of its type in Australia, broadcasting lessons to children over an area of 1.3 million sq km. While transmissions were originally all done over high-frequency radio, satellite broadband internet and web-cams now mean students can study in a virtual classroom. The guided tour of the centre includes a video. During school term you can view a live broadcast from 8.30am to 2.30pm Monday to Friday. The school is about 3km north of the town centre.
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Outback Park
Coastal Queenslanders will tell you there's only one reason to make the 1200km plus trek to Mt Isa, and it is to visit the Australian tourism award–winning Outback at Isa . Ancient history comes alive at this museum, which is a one-stop educational stop for Queensland's outback history, from pioneering to mining to local cultures. The centre also houses the Outback Park , showcasing the natural, indigenous and mining heritage of Mt Isa. There's a good-value, two-day Discovery Tour Pass , which combines all the attractions.
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Golden Dragon Museum & Chinese Gardens
Bendigo’s proud Chinese heritage can be explored at the wonderful Golden Dragon Museum & Chinese Gardens. Two enormous processional dragons, Old Loong (the world’s oldest) and Sun Loong (the world’s longest), reside here. Old Loong arrived in 1892 for the annual Bendigo Easter Festival, and Sun Loong took over in 1970 when Old Loong retired. The museum traces the involvement of the Chinese community in the development of Bendigo. Across the road are the pretty ornamental Chinese gardens and there’s a tearoom serving light meals and yum cha.
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Pioneer Settlement
Swan Hill’s major attraction, the Pioneer Settlement is an enjoyable re-creation of a paddle-steamer riverside port town. The dusty old-time streets feature shops, an old school and church, vintage car rides, Aboriginal keeping place and the fascinating Kaiser Stereoscope. PS Gem, one of the largest river boats to have served on the Murray, was being renovated at the time of research.
The paddle steamer PS Pyap makes one hour cruises along the Murray. Every night at dusk a 45-minute sound-and-light show brings the historic old town to life.
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Outback at Isa
The Australian Tourism Award–winning Outback at Isa is featured on most itineraries, and for good reason, too. The hands-on museum provides a colourful, articulate and air-conditioned overview of mining, pioneering and local history. It comprises a number of galleries and experiences like the Hard Times Mine and the fascinating Riversleigh Fossil Centre. It also houses the Outback park. There’s a good-value, two-day DiscoveryTourPass, which combines all the attractions.
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National Archives
Canberra’s original post office now houses the National Archives, a repository for Commonwealth government records in the form of personal papers, photographs, films, maps and paintings. There are short-term special exhibits, but the centrepiece exhibit is the Federation Gallery and its original charters, including Australia’s 1900 Constitution Act and the 1967 amendment ending constitutional discrimination against Aboriginal people. Records of military service and emigration can be accessed for those keen on exploring their ancestry.
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