cranberrygoddess
Canberra
Mixed histories — 2 years ago
Worth visiting!
This place is the newest of the canberra attractions with some interesting beginnings.
I have an old street directory of canberra in which it is included in a different location on the lake to where it was eventually built. A new government got in, some time passed, and they decided to put it at the site where they had decided to demolish canberra hospital.
When the hospital was being demolished crowds of people on the other side of the lake to watch it – some even rowed boats onto the lake to get a closer view. Then when they started, instead of imploding, the hospital exploded, killing a girl who was there to watch.
We were upset about this of course, and that a city of 300,000+ people couldn’t maintain two public hospitals (woden valley hospital – where i was born – then became ‘The Canberra Hospital’ and ‘Canberra Hospital’ was no more).
Eventually however, canberrans warmed to the museum because it wasn’t the museums fault about what happened to the hospital, or the girl, and it is a pretty good place.
Focussing on telling stories more than preserving objects, it has alot on Australian identity, what makes us unique, and has a bigger and more honest indigenous section than most other Australian museums. However, a bunch of conservative historians complained that the indigenous section was too big, and ‘coincidentally’ the director’s contract was not renewed.
Despite all this, it’s still a pretty impressive place in many ways. The main galleries are free – you only pay for special touring exhibitions. They have lots of cool seminars and events there. The building itself is interesting, though we all thought it looked gaudy when it was first built. It has some good interactive stuff, which is good to keep the kiddies entertained. My favourite bit is the recordings for the indigenous oral histories project, where you stand under this cone thing that plays people’s stories.
