Destination Sydney: Museums

Most of my time in Sydney was spent walking.  A lot.  Between neighborhoods, to attractions, up and down the beach, to find food, and in general just around.  And with all that walking, was a whole bunch of indoor walking as well at the Sydney Aquarium, the National Maritime Museum and the Australian Museum.

The first museum I did was the Aquarium.  Adelaide doesn't have a proper aquarium at all, so I was excited for some under da sea down under style.  From the outside, the Aquarium is pretty unimpressive.  Its right on the water in Darling Harbor and doesn't really look like too much besides a waterside warehouse sort of.  Greeting you in the lobby is a giant Lego statue of Poseidon.  The Lego models were one of the museum wide exhibits going on while I was there.  You probably noticed a few in the Picasa album.  The other big temporary exhibit was called The Future Is Wild.  It was supposed to be a glimpse of creatures inhabiting Earth 200 million years from now.  Strange flying bird fish, giant land squid, sharks with LEDs but still looking like sharks (they haven't changed much, why should they start next millenium I suppose?).  Overall it was fairly cartoony and fanciful and I didn't particularly think it added anything.  But meh, its 200 million years, who knows. 

The first part of the museum was pretty disappointing I would say.  There was the Shark HQ which illustrated the aquarium's efforts to track sharks around Australia and the world.  Seems there are quite a few that call Sydney Harbor home.  But it was mostly really small tanks with not much in them, river/lake/stream kind of things. 

After awhile though, it started to get interesting.  I got rather turned around as to where I was in relation to everything outside, but somewhere they tucked away two huge tanks with glass tunnels under them.  The first held a pair of dugongs  which are an Australian/not Florida manatee I suppose.  There were assorted rays and fish in there as well and they were being fed as I walked through.  In the next big tank was a number of different species of sharks, rays and a turtle.  Some of them were pretty big and there was a pretty impressive number of them too.  After the main shark tank came a couple of full size reef tanks with all of the assorted fish and sharks you would expect in a big main tank at a decent aquarium.  So, it got much better than it started.

Across Darling Harbor from the Aquarium is the National Maritime Museum.  The indoor museum is free to walk around and look at the various exhibits.  There was a large gallery dedicated to the shared US/Australia maritime history, including the whaling ships of old, the Great White Fleet and current Navy relations.  Another large gallery was dedicated to sharks with a conservation/dispelling the myths theme.

The main attraction at the museum was of course the ships outside.  With a number of smaller boats available for tours on a less frequent basis, the main vessels were the barque James Craig, the destroyer HMAS Vampire, and the submarine HMAS Onslow.   I did the James Craig last, late in the day so probably didn't pay as much attention as I should have.  She is one of only 4 original barques left remaining in the world, and probably the only one that still does scheduled and frequent tourist cruises.  Originally a cargo ship she was sold as a hulk a number of times in her life and eventually fully restored to her former glory by the folks at the National Maritime Museum.  The craftsmanship both above and below deck is pretty impressive and I would certainly consider pirating her and sailing around for a while.  If I was the stealing national treasures sort of type.

The first ship I boarded was the HMAS Vampire, an early to mid Cold War destroyer.  She was one of the last of the big gun destroyers that the RAN operated before the switch to modern missile destroyers.  Being a museum ship, of course the really interesting things were inaccessible.  But the rest of the ship was pretty interesting including some models of the engine room and an opened up turret and magazine/loading room.  Where I could I took some photos over bulkheads into rooms that were closed to visitors.  But with most of the machinery spaces closed down I didn't have too many Sea Term flashbacks.

Outboard of the Vampire was the Oberon class submarine HMAS Onslow.  As far as museums subs, this was pretty good.  Unlike Nautilus, you were able to get from forward to aft torpedo rooms on the first platform.  So, the torpedo tubes, control room, battle stations and engine rooms were all accessible.  Here I found myself nerding out on a combination of Seaterm and submarine.  I took pictures of oxygen candles, garbage disposal units, torpedo, tubes, depth gauges and engines.  I probably spent about an hour on the boat reading over a book of ship accomplishments (she took pictures of the undersides of USN carriers in big exercises before China decided it was the cool thing to do), poking my head in places no one else touring would have and chuckling at some 'facts' that the stationed guides would tell.  All in all, a pretty good time on board.  And there were no welding leads or ventilation pipes or production people to trip over.

A few days after my harbor side museum expeditions, I visited the Australian Museum just down the road from the cathedral in Hyde Park.  The Australian Museum is pretty much a natural history museum with a fairly large dinosaur exhibit, although I don't remember seeing any skeleton that wasn't a copy.  There was also a pretty large mineral exhibit as well as a modern skeleton room, the obligatory Egyptian room, and an Australian natural history exhibit.  The big temporary exhibit was a National Geographic Photo of the year exhibit which included quite a few stunning photographs from professionals and amateurs of all ages.  I didn't see any Webb photo elective pictures.  So maybe next year. 

Pictures are in the Picasa album.  Perhaps I'll add some more this weekend while I'm transferring CFD files.