We had the fantastic opportunity to visit the Australian Museum in downtown Sydney, which happens to be the oldest museum in Australia. The first thing we got to see was an extremely moving and emotional exhibit dedicated to the Indigenous peoples of Australia. We saw historical accounts of the horrors and hardships faced by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people upon invasion by the colonists, and their subsequent efforts made to sustain their culture and reclaim their land.
We then got a firsthand look at the museum’s spider collection. The museum had recently held a public spider exhibition, where people could touch and interact with some of Australia’s most well-known arachnids, and we now had a private tour with the people who ran the show. We saw a “dry” collection of spiders, with specimens delicately pinned in place in cases. We also saw the “wet” collection of spiders, a massive room where tens of thousands of spiders are grouped together by species and stored in glass jars filled with ethanol.
After spending some quality time with the deceased spiders, we saw some of Australia’s extinct megafauna—such as Diprotodon and the Giant Short-Faced Kangaroo—recreated with lifelike models. There were also a few other stuffed animals from species that are still very much alive and hanging around Australia today, such as my personal favorite, the dingo.
