Melbourne Museum and Melbourne Zoo Reviews

The pygmy blue whale skeleton that acts as the centerpiece of the museum’s main hall.

Melbourne’s two must-visit spots for visitors curious about the natural world are the Melbourne Museum and the Melbourne Zoo, which combine to house a vast array of specimens and species. You can come face to face with an iconic Australian racehorse, walk through an indoor forest and get up close and personal with adorable lemurs.

I was recently in Melbourne for a weekend and spent one day trying to see as much of the city as I could because I was going to be spending the second day at the incredible Phillip Island. But as per usual, I ended up spending almost all of my time at the city’s natural history museum and zoo. Thankfully, it was time well spent as I was able to see some very cool things and learn a lot about Melbourne and Victoria in the process. In addition, I was also able to get super close to some ring-tailed lemurs!

I started the day off with a walk through Fitzroy Gardens, which I would also recommend visiting. It is gorgeous and also houses the 18th century home of James Cook’s parents, brought all the way over from England. The gardens are also near the magnificent St. Patrick Cathedral, built in a grand gothic revival style with many spires and buttresses to boot. The church is open to the public and as remarkable inside as it is on the outside.

Melbourne’s St. Patrick Cathedral in all its gothic glory!

The Melbourne Museum is just a few blocks away from the cathedral, residing in Carlton Garden. Right next to the museum is the Royal Exhibition Building, a similar architectural marvel to St. Patrick’s, constructed in 1880. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its significance as one of the last remaining great exhibit halls from that time period, when the world was in an exhibition frenzy thanks to events like the world fairs. Many wondrous buildings were constructed to house the interesting specimens from around the world. The Royal Exhibition Building still hosts exhibits today.

Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Hall, a World Heritage Site and remnant of the Exhibition Age.

The Melbourne Museum is part of the Museums Victoria group and displays historical, natural and cultural specimens from Victoria’s past and present. It was founded by Frederick McCoy, an Irish paleontologist at the University of Melbourne who became the first museum director in 1854. McCoy is known for painstakingly recording the prehistory of Victoria through fossil evidence and scientifically naming the inland taipan, one of the world’s most venomous snakes.

Although he was a gifted paleontologist and founded a successful museum, he had a couple of less glamorous traits. He was a supporter of releasing exotic species, such as English songbirds, in Australia to lighten the mood, but all it really did was promote the introduction of invasive species. He was also a staunch creationist and so anti-Darwin that one of the museum’s most popular early exhibits was two stuffed gorillas that McCoy used to illustrate how crazy the idea of man’s descent from apes was. The two apes still stand guard outside the museum’s evolution exhibit, an exhibit which prominently displays Darwin’s theory of evolution. Yikes.

But the museum he created is a great visit today. The main hall houses the massive cross-section of a tree trunk thousands of years old; two stuffed reticulated pythons, the world’s longest snake, flanking a reticulated python skeleton; and a blue whale skeleton. Big is the theme right from the start with the Melbourne Museum, which is the largest museum in the Southern Hemisphere. The whale skeleton, although still huge, is puny by blue whale standards. It is from an individual that washed ashore along Victoria’s Great Ocean Road in 1992. This individual was a ‘pygmy’ subspecies of blue whale, only measuring a mere 61 feet long! A centerpiece quite fitting for such a large museum.

Next to the whale is the fossilized teeth of another giant sea creature with a far nastier bite. Carcharocles angustidens (“Great narrow-tooth shark”) would have feasted on the pygmy blue whale’s large ancestors in the waters around the world 25 million years ago. The teeth displayed in the hall are all from one animal, quite rare for fossil shark teeth. They were found at the Jan Juc fossil site in Melbourne. This is an extremely rare find, being only the third fossil example ever found of this frighteningly large shark. Based on the size of the creature’s teeth, scientists estimated this shark was over 26 feet long when alive!

The large, serrated teeth of the Great narrow-toothed shark that fed on early whales along Australia’s southern coast 25 million years ago.

Near the giant shark’s teeth is the entrance to the life science wing of the building, housing the Dinosaur Walk, a collection of dinosaur skeleton’s from around the world ‘marching’ down the hall, an exhibit on the evolution of the plants and animals of Australia, and exhibits on bugs, geology and creatures from the ocean. Although the Dinosaur Walk will gather most of the attention, displaying such paleo-rockstars as gallimimus, deinonychus, and T. rex’s close cousin Tarbosaurus, the rest of the exhibits are quite interesting and give visitors a great sense of Victoria’s interesting natural history. Some of the specimens that stood out most to me from this part of the museum were the fossilized tracks of Diprotodon, the largest marsupial to ever live; a fossil of megalania, Australia’s giant goanna, chasing a giant fossil duck; and an assortment of strange sharks ranging from the whip-tailed thresher shark (below) to the primeval-looking frilled shark.

Image 1: The Dinosaur Walk. Image 2: a thresher shark and prickly dogfish. Image 3: Megalania chasing a thunderbird skeleton.

After you travel down the rest of the hall you reach the Wild exhibit, a taxidermist’s dream complete with 600 stuffed mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, all seemingly forming a taxidermy army against the hall’s white backdrop. The Australian animals were the coolest to me, from the strange and spiky echidna to the dough-eyed fur seal. The inclusion of endangered frog species and the extinct thylacine were good additions to put this parade of living creatures in perspective. McCoy’s infamous gorilla diorama overlooks the hall on the second floor.

The museum’s Wild exhibit, a taxidermist’s dream.

On the rest of the second floor is the museum’s history and cultural collection, which includes an exhibit about the history of Melbourne which I found quite informative. It explained the city’s growth and had large set pieces including a huge stain-glass window, several specimens and books from McCoy’s collection and my personal favorite: a giant model of the Australian coat of arms, complete with a taxidermy red kangaroo and emu, the two animals that symbolize Australia (see picture below).

But the rest of the exhibit pales in comparison to the museum’s most famous specimen, the racehorse Phar Lap. The horse was an Australian icon during the Depression and won 36 out of the 41 races he ran, inspiring the nation during a difficult time. His death in 1932 sent Australia into mourning, as the several sympathy letters displayed alongside the taxidermy horse symbolize. Phar Lap looks as lean and powerful as ever, his chestnut fur still exuding life after all these decades. I saw a man pose with his son and grandson next to Phar Lap, evidence that Australia’s greatest racehorse is still iconic.

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A few more thoughts about the museum. On the ground floor by the whale skeleton is an awesome exhibit called the forest gallery. As the name suggests, it houses a huge forest within the museum. It enlightens visitors to the wonders of Australia’s flora and houses free-flying birds, blue-tongued skinks and stick insects. Near the entrance is a mesmerizing scene suspended from the ceiling of a great white shark chasing two fur seals as little penguins and a gannet attack a sardine ball. Finally, right next to the entrance is an area displaying several specimens from around Victoria, ranging from a kangaroo skull to parrots mid-dissection to a collection of eggs from different Australian birds. The random assortment of interesting natural history items was very cool, as was the gift shop that contained the largest stuffed animal dinosaurs I had ever seen. Good thing I never saw those when I was a kid.

A great white shark chasing a seal over a staircase near the museum’s entrance.

The next stop on my frantic day of touring was the Melbourne Zoo, Australia’s oldest zoo. It was opened in 1862 and some early attractions featured riding elephants, tossing peanuts to the bears in the bear pit and, most disturbingly, watching Mollie the orangutan smoke cigarettes in her small cage. Thankfully things are different now, and the zoo has over a hundred species in large, natural enclosures.

But that does not mean you are no longer able to get close to the animals. Although you cannot ride the animals, one of the exhibits is in a large, indoor enclosure where visitors are able to have an up close experience with several free ranging ring-tailed lemurs. The lemurs were mostly reclining on fences or chowing down on vegetables, but a few would dart across the pathway as you walked offering a thrilling encounter most people don’t have outside Madagascar.

A few of the other zoo highlights were the Asian elephants and giraffes, two staples at most zoos, as well as an interesting exhibit featuring several predators from around the world, including the iconic tiger and snow leopard as well as some lesser known species like the South American coati and the endangered Philippines crocodile. Near the reptile and amphibian house was an area dedicated to the critically endangered Southern Corroboree frog, a tiny frog covered in yellow and black stripes. There was a giant inflated Corroboree frog on top of the building, as well as a lab where scientists are working to captive breed the species, trying to reinforce a population ravaged by the spread of the chytrid fungus. This fungus is a global pandemic decimating global frog populations. Next door to the lab were display cases featuring several other Australian frogs, many of whom are also endangered.

The final highlight was the Australian animal exhibit and Great Flight Aviary. The aviary was really cool because it contained a large swamp, full of water and thick vegetation, and many strange bird species. Black-necked storks menacingly looked around, their bright yellow eyes contrasted with their dark-blue heads, while black swans picked at their feathers with bright red beaks as blue-billed ducks swam around the large pond. Throughout the rest of the exhibit you’ll come across many of the classic Australian species like emus and kangaroos, but my favorite part was seeing a wombat enjoy an afternoon snack. This was the first time I’ve seen the nocturnal wombat awake and active and they may be the only marsupial capable of challenging the koala’s cuteness.

A Northern hairy-nosed wombat out for a late afternoon snack.

Melbourne is a great place to visit for many reasons and I would definitely recommend the Melbourne Museum and Melbourne Zoo to any visitor interested in the natural world.

Bonus shot of a meerkat keeping watch at the Melbourne Zoo.

All photographs taken by Jack Tamisiea.

Sources:
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mccoy-sir-frederick-4069
https://cv.vic.gov.au/stories/land-and-ecology/melbourne-zoo-and-you-150-years/
https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/articles/14968

Queensland Museum Review

Brisbane’s natural history museum showcases an intriguing collection of specimens from across Australia’s most biodiverse state, including a great white shark and some iconic Australian dinosaur tracks.

Nestled in Brisbane’s cultural district, right across the river from bustling downtown Brisbane, the Queensland Museum houses specimens that tell the evolving story of the state of Queensland. The museum was founded by the Queensland Philosophical Society in 1863 inside a windmill. From there it has changed locations several times, eventually landing at Brisbane’s South Bank area in 1986, as well as changed hands, eventually landing in the hands of the Queensland Government. 

Although a relatively smaller museum compared to other natural history museums (and not much to look at from the outside), what the museum lacks in size and stature it makes up for with interesting specimens and strong narrative exhibits. The main foyer, which also houses the shop, has several large sea creatures and a 1920’s aircraft suspended from the ceiling. The airplane belonged to famed Australian aviator, Bert Hinkler. Hinkler was the first pilot to fly solo from England to Australia and was dubbed the “Australian Lone Eagle” (an awesome nickname). It was very cool to see the retro plane contrasted in the rafters with several of Australia’s iconic large sea creatures, including a great white shark, lunging at the plane with jaws agape, and a manta ray soaring through the air with its pectoral fins splayed.

Above: Image 1: Close up of the lower wing and wheel of the plane. Image 2: Great white shark and dolphin suspended near the plane. Image 3: Hinkler’s plane.

After you walk through the large foyer you come across several display cases housing interesting specimens from around Queensland, including a giant crystal, a soaring termite mound, and the trunk of a tree carved by early explorers to Queensland hundreds of years ago. A juvenile great white shark was displayed in a large tank of alcohol, preserved as if it had just been pulled out of the ocean yesterday. Although it pales in comparison to coming across an actual white shark while exploring the reef, there is something very interesting in seeing a real white shark up close and taking in the rows of teeth and the cold, black (“doll eyes” as Quint calls them in the movie Jaws) eyes of the misunderstood marine behemoth. Although Hollywood has painted a deceptively fearsome picture of sharks, the fact is that shark-human encounters (especially with great whites) are very rare and we kill sharks exponentially more than they even attack us (around 100 million sharks are killed each year due to everything from fear to shark fin soup). Getting a chance to see this shark up close was very fascinating because there is still so much we do not know about great white sharks, from their breeding habits to how many of them are still inhabiting our oceans.

Above: various views of the great white shark specimen, including a painting I did afterwards based on the specimen.

The shark was not the only giant ocean creature displayed in this first floor hall. Several large cephalopods inhabit similar tanks to the shark. A diamondback squid, named for the triangular shape of its two fins, and a giant cuttlefish, the largest species of cuttlefish that can change color like the rest of its brethren, occupy one of these tanks. A nearby tank contains a giant squid, a deep-sea denizen of mythic proportions. This squid specimen is aptly giant (its tentacles need to be folded back in order to fit inside of its tank) with an accompanying eye bigger than a balled up fist. The huge eye helps it see in the abyss that it resides in and helps it find prey, which it quickly disposes of with its great beak.

The magnificent eye of the giant squid straight from the abyss.

The final display case of the first floor hall houses the skeleton of Australia’s, and the world’s for that matter, most venomous land snake, the inland taipan, about to strike the skeleton of a rat. The dramatic scene is frozen mid-strike, showing off the articulated tension in the upper-half of the snake as it lunges forward. Inland taipan venom is potent enough to kill several humans, but one does not have to worry about coming across this shy and rare species of snake that lives in semi-arid habitats. Only a couple people have been bitten and none of them have died thanks to quick medical treatment. This display and the shark specimen were my two favorite specimens from the Queensland Museum.

A rat frozen in an attempt to scurry away from the lightning-quick strike of an inland taipan.

After walking past all of the display cases, you arrive at the paleontology exhibit, called Lost Creatures, which houses several dinosaur and megafauna specimens from around Queensland. The exhibit proceeds in chronological order, from Australia’s early days as part of the supercontinent Gondwana through the evolution of Australian dinosaurs and then into the domination of large marsupials during the Pleistocene period. 

Several specimens stood out, including a large swath of dinosaur tracks from Lark Quarry, the site of Dinosaur Stampede National Monument which is the location of the world’s only preserved dinosaur stampede. Part of the actual quarry is displayed at the museum, while a large cast of the rest of the quarry shows the large predatory dinosaur footprint and the resulting chaos that ensued as the herd of herbivores frantically dispersed. In addition to the famous dinosaur tracks, the exhibit also displays the actual fossil of a small ankylosaur (armored dinosaur) called Kunbarrasaurus and a large cast of Muttaburrasaurus, Australia’s famed iguanodon, that acts as the fulcrum of the exhibit. Both of these dinosaurs resided in primeval Queensland and are displayed alongside several other fossils dating from their time, including pterosaurs skeletons that “fly” overhead.

Image 1: Muttaburrasaurus skeleton Image 2: Kunbarrasaurus skeleton with some fossilized patches of skins Image 3: The only evidence of a dinosaur stampede, straight from the Lark Quarry (most prints shown here are from the startled bipedal herbivores).

The second part of the paleontology exhibit focuses on Queensland’s rich history of megafauna, displaying skeletons of giant kangaroos and the skeleton of the largest marsupial ever to lumber across the continent, diprotodon, the precursor to today’s wombats and koalas. My favorite part of this exhibit was the skeleton of megalania, a fearsome giant goanna dating back to this super-sized era of earth’s animals. The museum does a great job of displaying how fearsome this creature would have been to encounter, displaying its bones alongside the skeletons of a Komodo dragon and a crocodile monitor (which has eerily long teeth itself), the two largest species of living lizards. Both skeletons are dwarfed by megalania’s skeleton. This fearsome beast has been found with giant kangaroo bones inside its gut, which has led to widespread belief that these monster lizards fed on the monster marsupials they shared the Pleistocene outback with. It is also hypothesized that megalania was probably venomous like the monitor lizards of today. This venom would have helped them tackle larger prey.

Megalania is the giant killer lizard from Queensland’s past. In the back of the picture to the left you can see a Komodo dragons skeleton, roughly the length of megalania’s tail for scale.

Going up to the second level, visitors pass a large amount of construction and a fun case of mammal skulls that allows visitors to test their knowledge by trying to match the skulls with the correct species. On the second floor is the Wild State exhibit. Queensland truly is a wild state (the most biodiverse of Australia’s six states) housing 13 different terrestrial bioregions (ecologically and geographically defined regions larger than an ecosystem) and 14 different marine bioregions. These bioregions serve as home to 70 percent of Australia’s mammal species, 80 percent of its bird species, half of its reptiles and amphibians and 8,000 different species of plants according to a figure outside of the exhibit. To quickly put these numbers in perspective, Australia is the number one mega-diverse country in terms of the amount of endemic vertebrate species in the whole world, which makes Queensland’s diversity that much more astounding.

Some amazing statistics about Queensland’s biodiversity as Australia’s most mega-diverse state.

The Wild State exhibit does a great job of showcasing this diversity by displaying many of Queensland’s animal species in a sleek modern area, including some with accompanying habitat displays. The animals range from the giant perentie lizard, Australia’s current largest lizard now that the Megalania is no longer around, to dozens of butterfly and moth species, to flying possums, and to the dugongs that feed on the seagrass in Queensland’s estuaries. There is a very cool Great Barrier Reef display housing several species of large tropical fish and great big sea turtles.

The Queensland Museum is perfect for locals and tourists alike because it displays several incredible specimens that tell Queensland’s wild story from the mega beasts that used to call it home to the mega-diverse state it has become. The museum is a source of pride for native Queenslanders, as well as a great source of education and inspiration for all visitors. Besides the fact that it is the rare free museum that delivers quality, it also displays several unique specimens I had never seen before. Ultimately, the museum never strays far from the central goal of relaying Queensland’s remarkable natural history journey. 

Pictures and art all by Jack Tamisiea

Australian Museum Review

Killer Marsupials, fearsome crocodiles, and hundreds of Australia’s natural treasures highlight Sydney’s natural history museum.

One of the first things I did when I got off the plane in Australia was head to Sydney’s Australian Museum, a treasure trove of Australian and natural history artifacts. As the continent’s first public museum, opening in 1827, its main goal was displaying rare and intriguing natural specimens. In the 192 years since its humble beginning in the city’s old post office, the collection has swelled in size and relocated several times, eventually settling into its current location outside of Hyde Park in 1846. The building has continued to expand in order to better serve its scientific and research goals. The future could not be brighter for the museum. In 2018 the museum received $50 million to improve exhibit halls, and will welcome one of the largest King Tut exhibits ever in early 2021 to mark the centenary of the pharaoh’s discovery.

The increased flow of funds and interest in the museum will do wonders for the museum and its public displays. Although a new modern wing was added in 2008, several of the exhibits inside are dated and certain specimens (especially taxidermy mammals) are literally busting at the seams in their animal exhibit. But the strength of the museum is its very interesting and peculiar collection of Australian natural history items, ranging from a huge skeleton of a thundering diprotodon to a morbidly-wonderful horse skeleton bucking its skeleton rider into the air.

The Australian Museum was hosting a traveling exhibit about whales while I was there and had an interesting display of whale skulls near the entrance to the main foyer. The species of whales and porpoises represented by these skulls ran the whole gamut, from the thin-snouted, needle-toothed South Asian river dolphin to the hulking skull and thick, curved teeth of the killer whale. This display was an interesting introduction to the museum.

From left to right: killer whale skull, short-beaked common dolphin skull, South Asian river dolphin skull and Cuvier’s beaked whale skull

After entering the main foyer, adorned with a huge inflatable whale, I made my way through both the Wild Planet and Indigenous Australia galleries. Some of the aforementioned taxidermy was worn out, making for a few depressing-looking stuffed kangaroos and wallabies, but the abundance and amount of Australian animals was impressive for someone not familiar with these creatures. The taxidermy was supplemented with some impressive skeletons including a whale suspended from the ceiling, an Asian elephant, and a hippopotamus displaying its gnarly tusks. The Indigenous Peoples exhibit gave an interesting overview of their culture through many pieces of art on wood and some less traditional media, like the bill of a sawfish.

Up the stairs is the Dinosaur exhibit, which contains several very cool set pieces like the theropod vs. sauropod battle that greets you as you enter, a cast of gigantosaurus, and coolest of all, a life-size model of a dissected Tyrannosaurus rex, made for the 2015 National Geographic special, full of corn-syrup blood and rubbery organs. But the exhibit’s information was not spaced out making some specimens and information seem cluttered. Several of the models were dated, especially the very much reptilian, Jurassic Park-era raptor models near the end of the hall, lacking any semblance of feathers we now know they had. 

I would have loved to see more space dedicated to Australian dinosaurs. The only big Australian specimen of the exhibit was a very cool skeleton of the herbivorous muttaburrasaurus. The exhibit was trying to tackle the complete essence of dinosaurs, which is a very fair goal for a dinosaur exhibit, but it comes off a bit unoriginal. It would have been awesome to see more of Australia’s very cool and unique dinosaur history displayed.

Images Above: Image 1: Cool view of the sauropod-carnivore duel that took place in Northern Africa millions of years ago. Image 2: A life-size T-rex “cadaver” after the televised autopsy, missing an eye, a tooth, and the contents of its guts. Image 3: Muttaburrasaurus skeleton, one of the few Australian dinosaurs displayed.

Surviving Australia was one of the museum’s highlights. Located on the same floor as the dinosaur exhibit, the exhibit offered the Australian-themed exhibition I had been hoping for, exploring Australia’s weird, wonderful, and often times deadly inhabitants since the end of the dinosaurs. Some highlights centered around the bones and models of several famed Australian megafauna: a giant horned turtle with a spiked tail, resembling a creature straight out of Pokemon, a huge duck known by the fantastic name “Demon Duck of Doom”, a giant monitor lizard (more about them in future pieces), and, of course, the giant marsupials. 

The exhibit did a nice job of complementing bones and skeletons of the marsupials with life-like models (albeit older models with some patchy fur) of what these creatures could have looked like in life. These included the large wolf-like prehistoric thylacine, giant short-faced kangaroo, and the largest marsupial ever, diprotodon, a fantastic cross between a rhino and its modern cousin, the wombat. But the most interesting ancient marsupial displayed to me was the ferocious thylacoleo, a lion-sized ball of muscle and teeth that fed on the giant kangaroos and wombats of its day. The museum displays its fossilized jaws which may have equipped thylacoleo with the strongest bite of any mammal ever. All of these monster marsupials make prehistoric Australia seem like a fantastically strange and treacherous land, which is clearly the exhibit’s goal.

Image 1: Thylacoleo is also known as the marsupial lion and has the bone-crushing bite to back that up! Image 2: Thylacoleo’s murder weapons were its jaws (lower jaw shown here) which it used to dispatch other megafauna, like giant kangaroos. Image 3: a giant short-faced kangaroo skeleton.

A menacing look at the museum’s diprotodon model

The museum’s diprotodon skeleton perched above the rest of Surviving Australia

The rest of the Surviving Australia exhibit contains awesome specimens of the continent’s modern natural marvels, including a spectacular saltwater crocodile that truly lets you take in the species’ immense size. In the next room are interesting displays about the continent’s marine wonders, ranging from the Great Barrier Reef to penguins. On level three, there is a great display of the many unique birds that call Australia home. 

The standout exhibit at the museum was the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum, taking up the lower two floors of the Westpac Long Gallery. The second floor of the exhibit contains information on 100 people who have had significant impact on Australian scientific discovery, along with display cases depicting specimens from every department at the museum. The other half of the 200 is on the first floor, where 100 of the museum’s standout specimens are displayed together in large exhibit cases. The items were selected for historical significance, scientific importance, rarity, or just plain wonder, like an opalized (petrified with the mineral opal) plesiosaur skeleton that shimmered in soft hues of pink and gold. 

A few other specimens worth mentioning are the large Irish elk skeleton perched off the second floor balcony; a large gold nugget found in Australia; specimens and equipment from an early Australian Antarctic expedition, including a beaten-up sled and a penguin; and a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, pup embalmed in a jar. One interesting story I will take away from this exhibit was conveyed by a large red chair towards the front of the exhibit. It belonged to Gerard Krefft, an early museum director who was ousted over his belief of evolution by creationist museum trustees. Krefft decided to make a statement with his exit, refusing to leave his office or his chair. The trustees’ solution was to hire two prize-fighters who broke down the door to his office, picked up the chair and carried him out.

Image 1: The main exhibit hall containing the Australian Museum’s treasures, including the skeleton of an Irish elk, one of the largest deer species in history. Image 2: The opalized remains of an Australian plesiosaur. Image 3: Former museum director Gerard Krefft’s chair, which he was carried out on when he was ousted from the museum. Image 4: A preserved Tasmanian tiger pup from 1866. These large marsupial carnivores were hunted to extinction last century.

A piece containing a few of my favorite specimens from the exhibit. The only two not pictured above are a stuffed emperor penguin from an early Australian Antarctic expedition (top right) and the skull from the giant turtle, Meiolania (bottom left), mentioned earlier in the piece.

Stories like Krefft’s, and the incredible specimens collected by the museum in both Australia and around the world, are what I took away from the Australian Museum. It is at its best when it plays on Australia’s natural history in the Surviving Australia exhibit, and its own history, in 200 Treasures. It is worth a visit for both natural history lovers and those who are just curious about Australia. 

All photographs and art in this piece was taken or created by Jack Tamisiea