Our day at the Australian Museum

Our neighbour recently visited the Australian Museum and regaled us with stories of dinosaurs, fossils and skeletons...and of course the dinosaur egg procured from the gift shop.

We decided this sounded like a good idea. Especially our little miss, who I discovered thought the dinosaur hatching from the egg would be real and she could train it to fly around the backyard while she rode it.

After I explained to her it would just be a pretend pet like her other stuffed animals and not real, she was still keen to go and our little man also seemed eager as he walked around the house saying "I see dinosaurs".

We arrived at 10.30am, purchased our tickets and headed in.

First stop was Surviving Australia, an exhibit showing extinct animals from Australia, e.g. the tasmanian tiger (who is somewhat larger than I thought would be), and also the usual suspects, emus, echidnas and kangaroos. Oh, and the ever elusive Lyre Bird that digs up Nona and Poppy's garden when they aren't looking.

Tasmanian Tiger

Then came the dinosaurs, the kids were mesmerised, not knowing where to go first. "Mum, look at this", "Daddy, come, come", "Dad, check this out" and "Mummy, come, come". Hubby and I were being torn limb from limb.

We saw various dinosaur skeletons, bones, eggs and fossils. It was great. The kids got to have a go at being paleontologists and researching fossils.

It's T-Rex!

Some leaf eater dinosaur

Our little man was a bit scared when the thunder rumbled through the exhibit holding very tightly to my leg and looking up at me with eyes that screamed panic. I explained that it was just a sound and he was completely safe, I don't think he entirely believed me, telling me later, "Some dinosaurs scary".

We moseyed through the birds and insects on our way to the Search and Discovery area and saw samples of owls (my personal favorite), cockatoos, wrens, bower birds, spiders and a cockroach. The kids really loved turning the lights on in the insect boxes to see what was in there.

So beautiful and elegant, aren't they!

The Search and Discovery area was great. The kids were able to use microscopes, do fossil puzzles, touch "preserved" koalas, echidnas, wombats, and learn about stick insects.

There was also a space for the under fives amongst us, namely our little man called Kids Space which incorporated several pods that the kids could play in - volcano, marine, imagination, and bug. The kids had yet more fun running from pod to pod to see what they could discover. The Imagination pod seemed to be their favourite as there were mirrors they could see themselves for miles in.

On the way out we passed the mammal skeletons and I admit to being a little unsettled at seeing the human skeleton reading the paper with his skeleton dog and skeleton cat. But the kids loved the horse, elephant and whale skeletons.

Elephant

The last stop was buying two tyrannosaurus pet eggs from the gift shop. It ain't enough I can grow my own people, now I am growing dinosaurs too. The eggs are currently sitting in a bucket of water in bathroom waiting to hatch. Little miss has checked on them a total of 50 million times....and counting.

Have you been to the museum recently?

Do you love dinosaurs?