Apart from natural wonders, I am always fascinated towards museums. A trip to a museum is a good way to know about that country’s history, culture and other noticeable stuff in a short duration. So how could I miss WA museum in Perth during my two weeks visit of Western Australia? Western Australia Perth Museum is near to Perth CBD. The State Library of Western Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia and the museum all are in close proximity and are at walking distance to each other. So I planned to visit all these three places in one go.
Main entrance of WA museum in Perth. Good thing is that museum is free for all ages.
Vicinity in front of museum. As museum was adjacent to state library, most of the benches were occupied by students.
Static but furious dinosaur.
There were several galleries in the museum, each having its own theme.
The first one was marine gallery showcasing the diversity of sea life in WA coast.
A number of stuffed mammals, enclosed in glass cabins, were on display in Mammals gallery.
and some skeletons.
An extensive collection of butterfly species mainly from Australia, America and Africa. It’s Butterfly exhibition.
Bird gallery was full of variety of birds found in Western Australia.
Discovery center in WA museum. It had interactive displays and activities mainly for kids.
Some living reptiles, including snakes, were caged but these green frogs attracted me the most. Perhaps it was their bold color which I didn’t see before.
Six Simple Machines gallery where one can try to assemble wooden blocks to make some past machines. An activity based area.
I really liked the Land and People exhibition where past and present of the country were narrated with photos and historical objects. The exhibition was set within a magnificent heritage gallery space – the former Public Library building (Hackett Hall) which opened in 1913.
The original natives and inhabitants of Australia are called aboriginals (abos in short). They are still in Australia yet in small percentage (around 2.4%) of total population. They have totally different facial structure than other current locals of Australia and can be easily identified. What I heard from my friends living in Aus that during colonization of Australia by England in late 18th century, a number of aboriginals were massacred and almost a generation (kids) was taken away from their parents or killed (called as Stole Generations). I was also told that few decades back, they were administered under the ministry of flora and fauna (even not considered humans?). As of today, they don’t have Australian passport as there’s a special aboriginal passport for them. They protest and label Australian National Day as Black Day and still symbolically ask others to leave their country. Most of them are not much educated and Australian government provides them some financial support, just enough to let them have an average lifestyle. After coming back to my home country, I tried to google this issue and found that almost all of these statements are true in some extent. It’s really disappointing.
This Katta Dijnoong gallery, exhibits the lifestyle, tools, and weapons used by aboriginals in old times. Katta Djinoong is a Noongar term that means “see and understand us”.
After visiting the museum, I went to art gallery of western Australia. To my surprise, that was closed. A board at the entrance gate of art gallery was showing Tuesday as closed day in addition to weekends and unfortunately, it was Tuesday. Little disappointed, I started walking towards state library of WA. To be continued…
I will post about it later.
A Muslim Traveller 
What a stunning museum! Another powerful reason to visit Perth!
LikeLiked by 1 person