Australian Museum
6 College Street
Open 9:30am-5:00pm daily
www.austmus.gov.au
Wheelchair accessible

Cost: AUS$8
Sitablility Rating: Better than most
Souvenir Shop: Like the Nature Company, with lots of fake bugs and sounds of nature CDs.

I went into the Australian Museum by accident. I was walking along Hyde Park, stopped to consult my handy map, and saw that the museum was supposed to be right behind me. I turned around and sure enough, there it was.

This doesn't at all mean that the museum is insignificant or not worth seeing. Entry isn't free, like with most of the art museums, but if you can spare the $8, you should absolutely make a visit, as it's one of the few places in Sydney that gives you a sense of the depth of the history of Australia.

The museum can be divided into two sections: dead and alive. The dead part is just like any natural history museum in the States, with dinosaur bones, information on the evolution of man, stuffed birds, bugs glued in cases, all that kind of thing. For fish devotees there's a huge, and gross, coelacanth.

What you really want to see though, is the living side of things. On the main floor when you enter there's a large area devoted to Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. There are works of art, tools, jewlrey, and other items you would expect to find in a museum, but there's also a lot of life and energy in the exhibit. Take a seat in a cave and hear folktales, sit in a Christian schoolhouse and learn about the impact of Western culture, or watch a video about the Stolen Generation, Aboriginals who were taken away from their families to be raised in orphanages or with white families.