What is the South Australian Museum?
The South Australian Museum, on North Terrace in Adelaide, is a natural and cultural history museum founded in 1856. It holds the world's largest collection of Australian Aboriginal cultural material.
The museum's Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery displays objects from communities across the continent, including shields, boomerangs, baskets and paintings. It is a major resource for researchers and communities.
Natural history galleries feature Australian mammals, birds, minerals and fossils. A famous model of a giant squid hangs in the atrium, and the museum displays the opalised fossils and meteorites found in South Australia.
Antarctic history
The museum has a gallery dedicated to Sir Douglas Mawson, the Australian Antarctic explorer who led expeditions in the early twentieth century. His equipment and stories are on display.
The Ediacaran gallery shows some of the world's oldest animal fossils, from the Flinders Ranges.
Entry is free, and the museum runs research in biology, anthropology and earth sciences.
Its research collections hold millions of specimens, many of them gathered over more than 150 years of fieldwork across South Australia and the Pacific.
Did You Know?
The museum's Pacific Cultures Gallery is one of its oldest displays.