NSW 2013: Australian Museum

Australian Museum, the oldest museum in Australia. Established in 1827, it is the home of a wealth of exhibits encompassing natural history, skeletons, minerals and gems, Australian fauna and Aboriginal culture. Among all, seeing fossil dinosaurs in the dinosaur exhibition was the highlight of our visit. All because of my dear daughter is a fan of Dinosaur Train and has learn a lot about the extinct creatures. As a mother, I should ride on her interest to pay a visit to the Museum.

And boy, I'm glad I did! It was eye opening to see the life-sized models and complete skeletons. We had an educated and entertained tour in the Museum, from anthropology to palaeontology, from zoology to mineralogy. All the spaces are well-planned and brightly lit, just not sure why it has to be in an eerily lit space for the dinosaur exhibition. There is a play areas for kids at the upper floor, most of the toys and play station there are animal -related. By the end of our visit, we were kind of being led to this area for the girls to play and re-learn what they had learn from the museum tour.

Love this happy picture of them. On our way out from the Museum for late lunch. The Museum is allowed for re-entry for a day admission. So, don't lost but to retain the receipt for permission to return! 

We took the opportunity to walk through Hyde Park and pass by ANZAC War Memorial to go across to Liverpool Street (heading Daring Harbour). As the girls wanted to return to the Museum desperately, we chosen one restaurant in Liverpool Street to settle our lunch.

Hyde Park, is a 16 hectares of wide open park in the heart of central Sydney. The lush green makes the park an excellent escape from the CBD, if you want to claim a peaceful moment from hustle and bustle. 

Besides The Royal Botanic Gardens, Hyde Park was my perfect first reference point whenever I read and tried to figure where-we-are in the map. Amazingly, the significant 'squarish' green lung set in the middle of all tangled road networks and many pinned point-of-interests in the Sydney map always calmed me and helped us to find a direction.

A city mustn't lost its green lung.

SC snapped us from behind, on the ground of the pathway in Hyde Park. (I have the other shot as the header of my Chinese Blog, loving it!)

After our (not so good) lunch, we went back to Museum until the staff 'chased' us out at the dot of 5. Nope, we didn't have enough of the dinosaurs and all the dead bodies. 

What I learnt from the dinosaur exhibition is that, the experts believe that birds are evolved from dinosaurs as some characteristic of them pretty similar as dinosaurs. By the way, my girl taught me that there were three eras of dinosaurs: The Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The exhibition displayed 10 complete dinosaur skeletons from different era. Not to mention, the Museum has vast collection of specimens, from Ornithology to Entomology. You do know that there are thousands of birds and inserts in this world, right?

Australian Museum located on the corner of College and William Street.

Open: 9.30am to 5pm, closed on Christmas.

Access: Train to St James Station and short walk.

Admission: here (psst... but we got the family package of $30 for 2A+1C+an elderly, Bomber was FOC; SC's aunt and uncle are holding Australian Government Pension cards, so they were free too.)