A trip to the South Australian Museum
The South Australian Museum is right across from the North Terrace campus and has so much to see and learn. The Indigenous cultures gallery left me in awe with the artifacts, art, and history it contained. I saw the clever practises for building weapons, bags, water sacks and canoes to survive and a map that showed just how complex and far reaching different First Nation lands are. My partner was amazed to see works of one of her favourite artists, Albert Namatjira right in the city, free for all to see.
If the Indigenous culture gallery wasn’t enough to blow my mind, I then moved on to the fossils section where I saw old dinosaur bones and Australian megafauna long since gone. My natural curiosity comes out when I see these old fossils. I just can’t believe these creatures roamed the world, that wombat like creatures used to be the size of bears! It also holds a dire warning for the future and how rapidly mass extinction events can occur and how important it is to protect our wildlife.
Just around the corner laid a 2000-year-old mummy all the way from Egypt! The hieroglyphics and languages as well as the amazing translations linguists have figured out left me in awe. There was even evidence recorded by Indigenous art and stories of travellers from Egypt sailing all the way to Australia to trade. There are also many other accounts of different countries from South East Asia, Europe and the pacific having visited Australia, not with the intention to invade and conquer but to learn and trade.
Perhaps of all the amazing interactions and facts in the museum, it is the small things that always seem to amaze me. The geology section of the museum is full of the most amazing intricate rocks. The patterns, shapes and colours of some of them are amazing. There are diamonds and lumps of gold and meteorites as well as samples from mars! So, if I’m ever in need of a pick-me-up and eager to learn and see some great things I am definitely going back (especially when the frog and insect section reopens).