Powerhouse Museum

Last Sunday Kate and I headed over to the Powerhouse Museum. We thought this museum was supposed to be something like the Observatorium in San Francisco, where you get to poke and touch everything around without having to think too deeply about anything. Still feeling foggy from my cold, this seemed perfect for my low attention span. Now I know you're thinking I'm a terrible person for spreading my germs around to children, but the cold was on it's way out and I made sure to wash my hands a good often and used lots of hand sanitizer. In any case, apparently, neither of us had really looked at a description of the museum because it wasn't what we expected at all.

There definitely are plenty of interactive and kid friendly exhibits, but they are far more in depth than the touch and play installations I had in mind. A quick visit to their website tells you that the focus of this museum is science + design. According to Fodor's Sydney's 25 Best the museum is divided into five themed areas: Creativity and the Australian Achievement, Decorative Arts, Everyday Life in Australia, Bringing People Together, and Science, Technology, and People. This wasn't clear to me from the museum map so honestly, for a while I couldn't figure what this museum was about. It seemed like the craziest mix of exhibitions to have all in one place. On top of that, the various exhibits kinds of run together, flowing from one to the next.

In my ADHD state, it took me a while to shift gears. I was eventually able to focus though, and there is some very cool stuff in this museum. It's family friendly, with lots of stuff on subjects that would be interesting to kids, like trains and space. Then on the flip side, there are is also plenty that appeals to adults and the variety means there is something for everyone. Along side all the science, there are exhibits on social history and even fashion throughout the ages. After some discussion, Kate and I decided that the layout -- which seemed so weird at first -- actually is kind of perfect for short attention spans. If you find an installation that really enthralls you, you can delve deeply into that subject and read as much about as you want since they tend to provide A LOT of info. However, if you want to bounce from one thing to the next, there is something new around each corner and tons of corners to weave around.

There are plenty of interactive exhibits, although I have to admit that a few here and there didn't work for us. Still Kate and I did get the chance to poke, pull, and bash at plenty. I think we were pretty good stand-in's for ten-year olds.

The idea of this exhibit was kind of cool. It was meant to demonstrate how a computer might be able to approximate human responses and carry on a conversation with a human interacting with it. Problem was, she was very easily confused.

They had one more experimental, interactive exhibit called Artifact H10515. It looks like a giant alien cube with suction cup eyes and it incorporates content fed into the installation from the public. It requires planning ahead, but you upload content to the Artifact's website -- either from home or at the museum -- and that gets added to the video feed, appearing through the creature's eyes, so that the installation is constantly evolving. (If you do it from home, you're told the date on which your content will begin to appear on the Artifact.) The installation didn't blow me away, but I thought it was a cool way to get kids involved and an interesting way to capture the tastes of a population.

The section that most captivated my attention was a spectacular photographic journey through space that begins with images of the of our solar system, then the milk way, and finally moving into the universe beyond. I just found these pictures to be so surreally beautiful. I spent an age gazing at the pictures of stars and different galaxy formations.

I might have spent a little too long staring at the stars because I ran out of time to see all of the social history and design exhibits. I really loved what I did get to see of these, but seeing as how admission was a very reasonable $10, I might just come back somewhere down the line to finish checking these sections out.

After the museum closed, we were hungry -- big surprise. Luckily, Hannah's Pies was right across the street to ease our hunger and allow us to continue our survey of Australian Meat Pies. I ordered a "bacon and cheese" pie, however, there wasn't much bacon or cheese to be found in there. That said, the gravy was quite delish and there were some nice meat chunks in the pie. With a little chilli sauce on top, it definitely hit the spot.

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