The pygmy blue whale skeleton that acts as the centerpiece of the museum’s main hall.
Melbourne’s two must-visit spots for visitors curious about the natural world are the Melbourne Museum and the Melbourne Zoo, which combine to house a vast array of specimens and species. You can come face to face with an iconic Australian racehorse, walk through an indoor forest and get up close and personal with adorable lemurs.
I was recently in Melbourne for a weekend and spent one day trying to see as much of the city as I could because I was going to be spending the second day at the incredible Phillip Island. But as per usual, I ended up spending almost all of my time at the city’s natural history museum and zoo. Thankfully, it was time well spent as I was able to see some very cool things and learn a lot about Melbourne and Victoria in the process. In addition, I was also able to get super close to some ring-tailed lemurs!
I started the day off with a walk through Fitzroy Gardens, which I would also recommend visiting. It is gorgeous and also houses the 18th century home of James Cook’s parents, brought all the way over from England. The gardens are also near the magnificent St. Patrick Cathedral, built in a grand gothic revival style with many spires and buttresses to boot. The church is open to the public and as remarkable inside as it is on the outside.
Melbourne’s St. Patrick Cathedral in all its gothic glory!
The Melbourne Museum is just a few blocks away from the cathedral, residing in Carlton Garden. Right next to the museum is the Royal Exhibition Building, a similar architectural marvel to St. Patrick’s, constructed in 1880. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its significance as one of the last remaining great exhibit halls from that time period, when the world was in an exhibition frenzy thanks to events like the world fairs. Many wondrous buildings were constructed to house the interesting specimens from around the world. The Royal Exhibition Building still hosts exhibits today.
Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Hall, a World Heritage Site and remnant of the Exhibition Age.
The Melbourne Museum is part of the Museums Victoria group and displays historical, natural and cultural specimens from Victoria’s past and present. It was founded by Frederick McCoy, an Irish paleontologist at the University of Melbourne who became the first museum director in 1854. McCoy is known for painstakingly recording the prehistory of Victoria through fossil evidence and scientifically naming the inland taipan, one of the world’s most venomous snakes.
Although he was a gifted paleontologist and founded a successful museum, he had a couple of less glamorous traits. He was a supporter of releasing exotic species, such as English songbirds, in Australia to lighten the mood, but all it really did was promote the introduction of invasive species. He was also a staunch creationist and so anti-Darwin that one of the museum’s most popular early exhibits was two stuffed gorillas that McCoy used to illustrate how crazy the idea of man’s descent from apes was. The two apes still stand guard outside the museum’s evolution exhibit, an exhibit which prominently displays Darwin’s theory of evolution. Yikes.
But the museum he created is a great visit today. The main hall houses the massive cross-section of a tree trunk thousands of years old; two stuffed reticulated pythons, the world’s longest snake, flanking a reticulated python skeleton; and a blue whale skeleton. Big is the theme right from the start with the Melbourne Museum, which is the largest museum in the Southern Hemisphere. The whale skeleton, although still huge, is puny by blue whale standards. It is from an individual that washed ashore along Victoria’s Great Ocean Road in 1992. This individual was a ‘pygmy’ subspecies of blue whale, only measuring a mere 61 feet long! A centerpiece quite fitting for such a large museum.
Next to the whale is the fossilized teeth of another giant sea creature with a far nastier bite. Carcharocles angustidens (“Great narrow-tooth shark”) would have feasted on the pygmy blue whale’s large ancestors in the waters around the world 25 million years ago. The teeth displayed in the hall are all from one animal, quite rare for fossil shark teeth. They were found at the Jan Juc fossil site in Melbourne. This is an extremely rare find, being only the third fossil example ever found of this frighteningly large shark. Based on the size of the creature’s teeth, scientists estimated this shark was over 26 feet long when alive!
The large, serrated teeth of the Great narrow-toothed shark that fed on early whales along Australia’s southern coast 25 million years ago.
Near the giant shark’s teeth is the entrance to the life science wing of the building, housing the Dinosaur Walk, a collection of dinosaur skeleton’s from around the world ‘marching’ down the hall, an exhibit on the evolution of the plants and animals of Australia, and exhibits on bugs, geology and creatures from the ocean. Although the Dinosaur Walk will gather most of the attention, displaying such paleo-rockstars as gallimimus, deinonychus, and T. rex’s close cousin Tarbosaurus, the rest of the exhibits are quite interesting and give visitors a great sense of Victoria’s interesting natural history. Some of the specimens that stood out most to me from this part of the museum were the fossilized tracks of Diprotodon, the largest marsupial to ever live; a fossil of megalania, Australia’s giant goanna, chasing a giant fossil duck; and an assortment of strange sharks ranging from the whip-tailed thresher shark (below) to the primeval-looking frilled shark.
Image 1: The Dinosaur Walk. Image 2: a thresher shark and prickly dogfish. Image 3: Megalania chasing a thunderbird skeleton.
After you travel down the rest of the hall you reach the Wild exhibit, a taxidermist’s dream complete with 600 stuffed mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, all seemingly forming a taxidermy army against the hall’s white backdrop. The Australian animals were the coolest to me, from the strange and spiky echidna to the dough-eyed fur seal. The inclusion of endangered frog species and the extinct thylacine were good additions to put this parade of living creatures in perspective. McCoy’s infamous gorilla diorama overlooks the hall on the second floor.
The museum’s Wild exhibit, a taxidermist’s dream.
On the rest of the second floor is the museum’s history and cultural collection, which includes an exhibit about the history of Melbourne which I found quite informative. It explained the city’s growth and had large set pieces including a huge stain-glass window, several specimens and books from McCoy’s collection and my personal favorite: a giant model of the Australian coat of arms, complete with a taxidermy red kangaroo and emu, the two animals that symbolize Australia (see picture below).
But the rest of the exhibit pales in comparison to the museum’s most famous specimen, the racehorse Phar Lap. The horse was an Australian icon during the Depression and won 36 out of the 41 races he ran, inspiring the nation during a difficult time. His death in 1932 sent Australia into mourning, as the several sympathy letters displayed alongside the taxidermy horse symbolize. Phar Lap looks as lean and powerful as ever, his chestnut fur still exuding life after all these decades. I saw a man pose with his son and grandson next to Phar Lap, evidence that Australia’s greatest racehorse is still iconic.
A few more thoughts about the museum. On the ground floor by the whale skeleton is an awesome exhibit called the forest gallery. As the name suggests, it houses a huge forest within the museum. It enlightens visitors to the wonders of Australia’s flora and houses free-flying birds, blue-tongued skinks and stick insects. Near the entrance is a mesmerizing scene suspended from the ceiling of a great white shark chasing two fur seals as little penguins and a gannet attack a sardine ball. Finally, right next to the entrance is an area displaying several specimens from around Victoria, ranging from a kangaroo skull to parrots mid-dissection to a collection of eggs from different Australian birds. The random assortment of interesting natural history items was very cool, as was the gift shop that contained the largest stuffed animal dinosaurs I had ever seen. Good thing I never saw those when I was a kid.
A great white shark chasing a seal over a staircase near the museum’s entrance.
The next stop on my frantic day of touring was the Melbourne Zoo, Australia’s oldest zoo. It was opened in 1862 and some early attractions featured riding elephants, tossing peanuts to the bears in the bear pit and, most disturbingly, watching Mollie the orangutan smoke cigarettes in her small cage. Thankfully things are different now, and the zoo has over a hundred species in large, natural enclosures.
But that does not mean you are no longer able to get close to the animals. Although you cannot ride the animals, one of the exhibits is in a large, indoor enclosure where visitors are able to have an up close experience with several free ranging ring-tailed lemurs. The lemurs were mostly reclining on fences or chowing down on vegetables, but a few would dart across the pathway as you walked offering a thrilling encounter most people don’t have outside Madagascar.
A few of the other zoo highlights were the Asian elephants and giraffes, two staples at most zoos, as well as an interesting exhibit featuring several predators from around the world, including the iconic tiger and snow leopard as well as some lesser known species like the South American coati and the endangered Philippines crocodile. Near the reptile and amphibian house was an area dedicated to the critically endangered Southern Corroboree frog, a tiny frog covered in yellow and black stripes. There was a giant inflated Corroboree frog on top of the building, as well as a lab where scientists are working to captive breed the species, trying to reinforce a population ravaged by the spread of the chytrid fungus. This fungus is a global pandemic decimating global frog populations. Next door to the lab were display cases featuring several other Australian frogs, many of whom are also endangered.
The final highlight was the Australian animal exhibit and Great Flight Aviary. The aviary was really cool because it contained a large swamp, full of water and thick vegetation, and many strange bird species. Black-necked storks menacingly looked around, their bright yellow eyes contrasted with their dark-blue heads, while black swans picked at their feathers with bright red beaks as blue-billed ducks swam around the large pond. Throughout the rest of the exhibit you’ll come across many of the classic Australian species like emus and kangaroos, but my favorite part was seeing a wombat enjoy an afternoon snack. This was the first time I’ve seen the nocturnal wombat awake and active and they may be the only marsupial capable of challenging the koala’s cuteness.
A Northern hairy-nosed wombat out for a late afternoon snack.
Melbourne is a great place to visit for many reasons and I would definitely recommend the Melbourne Museum and Melbourne Zoo to any visitor interested in the natural world.
Bonus shot of a meerkat keeping watch at the Melbourne Zoo.
All photographs taken by Jack Tamisiea.
Sources:
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mccoy-sir-frederick-4069
https://cv.vic.gov.au/stories/land-and-ecology/melbourne-zoo-and-you-150-years/
https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/articles/14968
