Off to the Museum we go....

The day was a Sunday and the Australian Museum was all set up for its open day, so free entry for everyone! Good news for me as I love freebies and kudos to Kuan Lung for obtaining the information.

Woke up early at around 8 o'clock to prepare breakfast and also got ready for the trip. However, we only left the house at around 9 a.m. and arrived at Hyde Park for morning photo taking session.

We progressed to the Museum at 10.30 a.m and were quickly greeted by an immense crowd of people, mostly young families. The crowd was huge and there were so many children running up and down, touching this and that, spilling things and wailing on top of their lungs. You get the picture, don't you. Oh well, free stuff has its cons too.

We started at the first floor glancing around bones and skeletons of different animals. The bones are for real and if they could, I think they would have placed a real human skeleton over there too (because they wrote something like : Importation of human skeleton is prohibited since 19XX, therefore, some of the bones on display are artificial). Then we continued up stairs to listen to a talk on how insects mate. Interesting, but not really new as I've heard of some of the insect mating stories before.

Stayed at level 2 for a while, trying to appreciate the displays of insects and other preserved animals but due to the constant tugging and screaming of children, we decided to continue upstairs to the new wing of the Museum which is not usually opened to the public.

In the new wing, we saw the labs where they sort and preserve the specimens that they receive. They also gave us a chance to be lab assistants for a day - so we had a chance to use the microscopes, forceps and specimen tubes. The real laboratory assistants were there to guide us through their work too, so we were supervised. I somehow felt at home though when I was at in the laboratory because I used to follow my mom to her work place since I was small and the setting of the labs are very similar to those back at IMR. The labs were categorised into different department which include insects, fishes, fossils, etc... I forgot the rest.

We did get lost in the Museum for a couple of times because we couldn't find the way back to the old wing where the real displays are.

Once we were back at the main part of the Museum, we went to a kiddy section where they had displays for children because Kuan Lung wanted to do so. Tried to understand the aboriginal culture but failed miserably in a "string game" that the aboriginal children plays during their free time. The place was filled to the brim with children so we rushed out and continued to the next exhibition room.

If I'm not mistaken, our next destination was something about the environment and how we should protect it from carbon emissions. Quite fun because we had an interactive game session with other visitors and I won, representing the government of INDIA! Haha... But.... the other players are children -.-"

There were other exhibitions that we visited such on creatures living in Australia, dinosaurs, insects, plants and birds and also gemstones (which was the quietest among all because children have no interest here).

We stayed at the museum from 10.30 up till 5 in the evening. Really exhausting because of the crowd. But still we could muster more energy for night activities which I will blog about in the next post. So drop by in a few days time for the continuation.

p/s: If you notice, pictures are mostly of gemstones, that's due to the fact that the place was too crowded and I was too lazy to snap photos. So I just took a few snaps in this exhibition because of Kuan Lung's persuasion. :P

Off to the Museum we go....

The day was a Sunday and the Australian Museum was all set up for its open day, so free entry for everyone! Good news for me as I love freebies and kudos to Kuan Lung for obtaining the information.

Woke up early at around 8 o'clock to prepare breakfast and also got ready for the trip. However, we only left the house at around 9 a.m. and arrived at Hyde Park for morning photo taking session.

We progressed to the Museum at 10.30 a.m and were quickly greeted by an immense crowd of people, mostly young families. The crowd was huge and there were so many children running up and down, touching this and that, spilling things and wailing on top of their lungs. You get the picture, don't you. Oh well, free stuff has its cons too.

We started at the first floor glancing around bones and skeletons of different animals. The bones are for real and if they could, I think they would have placed a real human skeleton over there too (because they wrote something like : Importation of human skeleton is prohibited since 19XX, therefore, some of the bones on display are artificial). Then we continued up stairs to listen to a talk on how insects mate. Interesting, but not really new as I've heard of some of the insect mating stories before.

Stayed at level 2 for a while, trying to appreciate the displays of insects and other preserved animals but due to the constant tugging and screaming of children, we decided to continue upstairs to the new wing of the Museum which is not usually opened to the public.

In the new wing, we saw the labs where they sort and preserve the specimens that they receive. They also gave us a chance to be lab assistants for a day - so we had a chance to use the microscopes, forceps and specimen tubes. The real laboratory assistants were there to guide us through their work too, so we were supervised. I somehow felt at home though when I was at in the laboratory because I used to follow my mom to her work place since I was small and the setting of the labs are very similar to those back at IMR. The labs were categorised into different department which include insects, fishes, fossils, etc... I forgot the rest.

We did get lost in the Museum for a couple of times because we couldn't find the way back to the old wing where the real displays are.

Once we were back at the main part of the Museum, we went to a kiddy section where they had displays for children because Kuan Lung wanted to do so. Tried to understand the aboriginal culture but failed miserably in a "string game" that the aboriginal children plays during their free time. The place was filled to the brim with children so we rushed out and continued to the next exhibition room.

If I'm not mistaken, our next destination was something about the environment and how we should protect it from carbon emissions. Quite fun because we had an interactive game session with other visitors and I won, representing the government of INDIA! Haha... But.... the other players are children -.-"

There were other exhibitions that we visited such on creatures living in Australia, dinosaurs, insects, plants and birds and also gemstones (which was the quietest among all because children have no interest here).

We stayed at the museum from 10.30 up till 5 in the evening. Really exhausting because of the crowd. But still we could muster more energy for night activities which I will blog about in the next post. So drop by in a few days time for the continuation.

p/s: If you notice, pictures are mostly of gemstones, that's due to the fact that the place was too crowded and I was too lazy to snap photos. So I just took a few snaps in this exhibition because of Kuan Lung's persuasion. :P