Australian Museum

Stand on the footpath for a moment and look at the stone. It is Sydney sandstone, the colour of honey and toast. In the afternoon light it glows a soft gold. Run your eye along the columns and you will see small pits, streaks of iron-red and patches of darker weathering. Behind you, the trees of Hyde Park move in the breeze. Buses hiss past on the road. You are standing beside the oldest museum in Australia.

The Australian Museum began in 1827. That is only a few decades after the British colony at Sydney Cove was founded. At first it had no grand building at all. It was simply called the Colonial Museum. It was a collection of curiosities, specimens and objects gathered by settlers, officials and naturalists. Many of them were trying to make sense of a continent whose animals and plants looked like nothing they had seen in Europe.

Think about that strangeness for a second. A platypus, with a bill like a duck and fur like an otter. A kangaroo, carrying its young in a pouch. When the first specimens reached Britain, some scientists suspected a hoax. A museum in Sydney was a way to collect, describe and argue about these creatures close to where they lived. That scientific work still continues here today, out of sight, behind the public galleries.

Now look again at the building itself. The oldest part is known as the Lewis Wing. It takes its name from Mortimer Lewis, the colonial architect who designed it in the middle of the nineteenth century. The style is classical revival — architecture that copies the temples of ancient Greece and Rome. The tall columns and the heavy, symmetrical front were meant to signal learning and permanence. In a young colony, a building like this was a public statement. It said that Sydney intended to be a serious city.

It is worth remembering whose land this is. The museum stands on the Country of the Gadigal people, part of the wider Eora Nation. Their connection to this place is tens of thousands of years older than any sandstone wall. In recent decades, the museum has worked more closely with First Nations communities. Galleries now share Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge in their own voices, rather than only through the eyes of outside collectors.

Here is a story that many visitors never hear. In the 1860s and 1870s, one of the museum's leading figures was a naturalist called Gerard Krefft. He was a strong supporter of Charles Darwin's new ideas about evolution, at a time when those ideas were deeply controversial. Krefft clashed with the museum's trustees. He was eventually dismissed. According to the popular account, he refused to leave his office — so he was carried out of the building, still sitting in his chair.

That tension between science and authority runs through the museum's long life. Over two centuries, the collection has grown enormously. Today it holds millions of objects and specimens. There are insects pinned in drawers, fish kept in jars of preserving fluid, minerals, fossils, birds and cultural objects from Australia and the Pacific. Only a very small part of all this is ever on display. Most of it is kept for research by the scientists who work here.

In recent years the museum went through a major transformation. A large renovation project rebuilt the entrance and opened up the inside of the old building. The work finished around 2020. The new entrance faces William Street, and it is light and modern, with plenty of glass. The contrast is deliberate. Old sandstone meets new design, and you can see both from where many visitors arrive.

When you go inside, look for Hintze Hall. It is one of the oldest interior spaces in the museum, and it was carefully restored during the renovation. The hall rises over several levels, with galleries running around the sides. Light falls in from above. Displays of animals and specimens fill the space. Pause at the railing on an upper level and look down. From there you can see how the Victorian builders created a room designed to make visitors feel small and curious at the same time.

If you only have a short visit, a gallery called 200 Treasures is a good place to begin. It brings together objects and specimens chosen to tell the story of the collection and of Australia itself. There are things from the natural world and things made by people. There are also stories of individuals who shaped the country. It works almost like a summary of the whole museum, in a single set of rooms.

Many families come straight for the dinosaurs, and you will likely hear excited children before you see the skeletons. Other visitors spend their time among the minerals, where crystals catch the light in deep purples, greens and gold. Some go to see Australian animals up close — the ones you may never spot in the wild, such as shy nocturnal creatures and deadly spiders. Each gallery has a different pace. Some rooms are loud and busy. Others are calm and almost silent.

When you step back outside, notice where the museum sits in the city. Hyde Park is right across the road, with its long avenues of trees. A short walk away rise the spires of Saint Mary's Cathedral, built from the same warm sandstone. Office towers stand behind them. In one view you can see colonial Sydney, religious Sydney and modern Sydney together. The museum was placed here to be at the centre of public life, and it still is.

Before you leave, take one last look at the columns. Touch the stone if you can reach it. It is cool in the shade and slightly rough under your fingers. People have walked past this wall for well over a century, on their way to work, to church or to the park. Inside, scientists are still opening drawers and labelling specimens. As you walk away, listen for the birds in Hyde Park... some of them are the same species that sit, carefully preserved, in the collection behind you.