A Museum, Rain, and More Rain, Brisbane

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It didn’t look like it was going to be a good day in terms of the weather. In fact it was supposed to be a huge storm and torrential rain and would possibly cause some flooding. So we decided to do the Queensland Museum that day. It wasn’t very far from our accommodation at all and we were staying in a very central location so we didn’t have to get up too early that morning to still get there at a reasonably early time. The Queensland Museum is located near to the state library and there are several museums and other things like that around too. Coming up to the museum we passed two huge whales which were cool and we could see in to various dinosaurs and things in the windows. Entry to the museum is free which is good and there is quite a lot there despite one fairly large hall being closed and several hours stretched to half a day could easily be spent there. Though the museum is free to get in, it would be quite easy to spend some money in the gift shop and I certainly would have if it wasn’t for the fact that I had a flight on a budget airline (JetStar) with very limited luggage (and it was a good thing too – on our flight from Cairns back to Perth the two of us combined were only 300 grams off our limit).

There was lots of really cool stuff in the museum, not quite as good as the London Natural History Museum and not quite as big but there was lots of different stuff that was very nice to see and naturally being the Queensland Museum, almost everything there was from Queensland. There were some pretty cool rock and mineral displays and there was a very large display of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander stuff which was also extremely interesting. There were also a couple of little bits and pieces with other human stuff but the vast majority of the museum was natural history. A giant squid was the first really awesome thing that I saw

followed closely by a really weird display of a Perentie that died swallowing an Echidna with the two then being mummified in the desert.


We then entered the 'Lost Creatures' display which was a large hall with various extinct Queensland species from dinosaurs to more recent extinctions with lots of different really cool displays, interactive things, loads of fossils and it was generally awesome to spend a fair while looking around. The centre of the hall had a Muttaburrasaurus langdoni

with things spread around including the back wall which was being projected with dinosaurs running across mud and below was a big slab of fossilised mud filled with dinosaur prints. There were various other animals dotted such as a preserved Great White Shark and a stuffed Wedge-tailed Eagle but the main area with lots of animals was the 'Discovery Centre' and I spent a lot of time there.

Just outside the entrance to that hall though was a large display with rows of skulls of various mammal species and just inside was a Blainville’s Beaked Whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling. Most of the animal displays were in large cabinets all around the wall.


These included corals, insects, crustaceans and all manner of different invertebrates with lots of weird and wonderful things. There was also a large variety of vertebrates including reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds and fish and everything was grouped taxonomically and I really enjoyed looking around all of this and they were all species from Queensland too. There were other displays in the middle of the hall including a few half-taxidermied animals which was interesting,

and there were a few live animals too which were: a 'Pond Creatures' tank, Green Tree-pythons, Leaf-tailed Geckos, Giant Burrowing Cockroaches, and stick insects, as well as a display of a newly discovered species of spider, Dolomedes briangreenei.


I spent quite a while here and also looked at all the other exhibits but even so this wasn’t a full day museum so we were a bit stuck as to what to do for the rest of the day. Although when we arrived at the museum it was only drizzling lightly, the rain had become quite heavy at this point. We had a quick look at the small outdoor area of the museum which was a little courtyard thing with some dinosaur models but it was too rainy to spend long out there. Once we had seen everything in the museum, had a snack in the café, and looked at the most interesting displays twice, there was still a considerable portion of the day left with very little that we could do in the very heavy rain which was forecast to get worse all through the night before being sunny the next day. We browsed the museum gift shop a bit and also did a quick run through the rain to reach the nearby book shop at the state library where we looked around there a bit. There was also an art gallery nearby which we had a very quick look in because it was free, but I didn’t find it at all interesting to be honest.

By the time we had milled around here a bit it was about four so we headed back to the hotel room. Of course we got rather wet in the process because we had to run through the rain when leaving. The rain did lighten up a little bit for a short while but by the time we got back to the room and sat down for a little bit the rain was incredibly heavy with the sky filled with dark clouds so we spent the late afternoon and evening relaxing in the room which was actually a very small apartment so had a little table and seating area as well as the beds. Because it was raining so heavily we decided to order food online for dinner from a nearby Thai restaurant that would deliver, however the rain was so heavy that the roads were flooded so an hour after the food was due we got a call from the restaurant saying they were struggling to get food out because the roads were flooded and it would just be another twenty minutes. Also because it was so late they would give it to us for less than half price. Excellent. We had a relaxed evening that night before going to bed early while it was still raining very heavily, and we hoped it would have stopped raining by the next day (as it was forecast to do) so we could visit the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.

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