Sydney: Australian Museum

From the ANZAC Memorial, we walked about mid-way down Hyde Park and then took a right to go to the Australian Museum across the street.

The museum is billed as a place to experience “science, culture, and nature in the heart of Sydney.” Founded in 1827, it is Australia’s first museum. Today there are some 21 million cultural and scientific objects that are rotated through the exhibits.

The amazing thing is that except for special exhibitions, such as the current “Ramses & the Gold of the Pharaohs,” there is no admission charged. Having spent three weeks in Egypt in 2018, we opted to skip the paid exhibit and visited the permanent ones only.

With so much to see, we decided to focus on a few key exhibits … the 200 Treasures in the beautiful Westpac Long Gallery taking up most of our time. Of course, we didn’t skip the others … we just wandered through them at a faster speed.

The 200 Treasures exhibit actually consists of 100 artifacts deemed most-valued plus the stories of 100 of Australia’s most-influential people. I must admit that I had a hard time stopping myself from photographing all of the treasured items, but I did my best as I would have otherwise still been in the gallery at closing time.

Between visiting the galleries, we ended up on the top floor where we found one of the several food places in the museum — Bistro Gadi. It is apparently a pop-up venue. The menu had an Egyptian flare … a nod to the Ramses exhibit, I imagine. The concept was simple … one main + two sides; one main + 3 sides; 3-sides, etc … priced accordingly. With beautiful views of Hyde Park, St Mary’s Cathedral, and Woolloomooloo Bay as a bonus, it was a good place to take a break.Read more