The South Australian Museum ... Part Two

Destination: the South Australian Museum...

The T-Rex standing vigil on the door --

The Baleen Cafe, with the museum's "little shop" just to the left...

The view from the foyer, across the gardens to North Terrace. Hot out there, cool inside!

An allosaurus skeleton poises, ready to pounce, above the information desk

The other end of the beautiful glass foyer ... let the exhibits begin!

The Polynesian collection is vast and fascination --

-- you could spend an hour on this display alone.

It wouldn't be a museum without an Egyptian room, right? Mummies and all!

The fossil collection is reminiscent of fractal artwork... 

Whale baleen on display down by the Baleen Cafe.

Amazing malachite ... this piece of from Burra, which we visited back in April of 2013.

The bronze in the foyer --

-- and the "Thunder Egg" geode in the geology display, not to mention...

...the crystal that looks like it came right from Mars!

The skeleton of a sea turtle is very old, but not as old as --

-- a perfect fossilized trilobite, one of many species that abounded in our waters.

A couple of years ago the museum hosted the Wildlife of Gondwana exhibition --

Thanks for visiting the South Australian museum ... come back soon!

Every time you visit the museum, you wonder where four hours vanished to -- it's so easy to lose track of time. These images were gathered on several visits, most notably the Wildlife of Gondwana display of 2010, for which a massive hardcover book was produced. We indulged in a copy at the "little shop" on the way out. Copies are still circulating -- give Amazon a shot. The display/show was designed by Monash University, and in fact has a permanent page on their site. For a cool sixty grand, in Aussie dollars, you can hire it, complete with three specialist technicians who come out to install it, including setup and takedown. It really was amazing.

And of course, what you see above doesn't even scratch the surface of what's actually in the museum on a permanent basis. One of the most fascinating displays is of the history of Antarctic exploration and settlement, but the light levels there are prohibitively low. Photography is allowed inside the museum, but flash isn't (duh), and with the flash turned off, it's very difficult to get images at all, much less good ones.

(The cameras we use are Fuji, ranged over several generations of development, and it's interesting to see how different cameras handle the challenge of low-light different ways. Most images on this post were captured with the Fuji Finepix HS10, which is now waaay obsolete, of course. The HS50EXR is the current model ... with 16 MPs, 3" LCD, 42x Optical Zoom ... droool!)

Soon enough, you find yourself making your way back to the tram ... rush hour traffic is starting, with the sun angling down and the streets hot, dusty. Or you might have visited the museum in the dead of winter, and you'll be rushing through the rain to get back to the tram stop. Then, a ride back to Glenelg with the early commuters. Might even have learned a thing or two!