There aren't many museums where you can show off your athletic ability (or lack of it), but the Australian Sports Museum (australiansportsmuseum.org.au; adult/child $37/16) is more than just a repository for dusty trophies and team photos. The "Game On!" section offers the opportunity to kick goals, shoot hoops, test your reactions and pit yourself against Olympians. Sports nuts, big and small, will love it.
Hidden away in the bowels of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the museum focuses on Australia’s favorite sports and historic sporting moments, with a particular emphasis on local obsessions: AFL, cricket, horse racing and the Olympics. There are Olympic medal and torch displays, sporting clips on rotation, and even a hologram of late cricketing great Shane Warne. Objects on display include the handwritten notes used to define the rules of Australian Rules Football in 1859; a collection of baggy green caps worn by a who's who of Aussie cricket (including the legendary Don Bradman); olive branches awarded to Edwin Flack, Australia’s first Olympic medalist, in 1886; and sprinter Cathy Freeman’s famous Sydney Olympics swift suit.
The most traditional part is the Melbourne Cricket Club Museum, which has its own separate wing filled with treasured mementos.
Allow about an hour if you're a fair-weather sports fan; more if you're a cricket nut. Tickets can be combined with a 75-minute guided tour of the MCG, taking you behind the scenes and onto the boundary line (adult/child combo $48/21, tour only $37/16).
