BEHIND THE SCENES at the Australian Museum
Museums
Daily at 11.00am Duration 2 hours
Information
The Australian Museum is opening its doors with the Behind the Scenes tours - offering people a unique insight into the Museum’s extraordinary collection of over 16 million scientific specimens and cultural artefacts.
Come along for an up close and personal look at areas and collections within the Museum never seen before by the general public.
Visit working areas normally reserved for staff and researchers where rare specimens are carefully preserved and scientists conduct the latest research into life on planet Earth.
Sneak a peek at creatures large and small, birds and mammals, ancient fossils and precious minerals plus an incredible array of artefacts from Indigenous Australia and the Pacific.
From the smallest Australian scuttle fly to the enormous rhinoceros beetle or the South Australian giant crab, a 10 million year old fossil and an arsenal of spears from the Pacific, Behind the Scenes tours offers a ‘wow’ factor at every step.
The tour includes stories behind the naming of the first and only Australian lung fish, artefacts owned by Captain Cook and the King Penguin collected by Sir Douglas Mawson on his 1912 Antarctic Expedition.
Behind the Scenes at the Australian Museum – Sydney’s leading scientific and cultural experience.
Highlights
* the Goliath Tarantula - a South American spider that can grow as large as a dinner plate
* 20,000-year-old Diprotodon fossils
* the jaws from a Scalloped Hammerhead Shark
* the Tasmanian Tiger - one of 140 specimens of extinct species in the Museum's collection
* a rug made from 75 Platypus skins
* the largest collection of Funnel-web Spiders in Australia
* a King Penguin collected by Sir Douglas Mawson's Antarctic Expedition in 1912-13
* a Torres Strait Island dance mask acquired by the Museum in 1907
* items collected by Captain James Cook and spears in the Pacific Collection
* a giant crab and lobster in the Marine Invertebrates Collection
* ‘painted ladies' opals in the Gem Vault
* fluorescing parrots
* exotic butterfly and beetle collection
* the taxidermy lab
* opalised fossils 110 million years old
Venue
Australian Museum @ 6 College Street, Sydney
Price
Members $110 non-Members $130
Bookings
Bookings essential: (02) 9320 6009