About Perth's Museums

Perth City has a number of museums that reflect its colorfully historic past and caters to a wide range of interests. You will find most of these museums located at Northbridge, which is considered to be the cultural center of Perth. If time allows, it is worth your while to make a visit to two or more of the following museums to get to know the history and culture of Perth as well as to give you an appreciation of Perth s past.

The Western Australian Museum, situated right at the very heart of Perth’s cultural precinct in Northbridge, is the place to go to, to get to know about the culture and history of Perth. The main museum for the state of Western Australia, established in 1891, it is the largest and most comprehensive museum, housing more than two million artifacts and specimens. It surpasses all expectations with its excellent gallery of Aboriginal culture, a marine gallery with an 82 feet long blue whale, a gallery of dinosaurs, vintage cars and a collection of meteorites. The museum’s permanent exhibitions include the Katta Djinoong display (focusing on Western Australia s Aboriginal heritage), bird, butterfly and mammal galleries.

The museum building was formerly a prison and the old Perth Gaol, also on site, which forms part of the museum, features a number of regularly changing and special exhibits. The museum shop and coffee shop are also worth a quick visit and, as with the museum itself, admission is free. The Francis Burt Law Museum, was built in 1936, a mere seven years after the first Europeans settled in the western Australian region. The Old Court House is one of Perth s oldest public buildings.

Before it was converted into a museum, the building has been used for many purposes including a school, church, concert hall and public meeting house. Presently, the building is being used as The Law Society of Western Australia s community of educational center and museum for legal history in Western Australia. The museum is a display of the history of law in Western Australia and one of the few Law museums in the world. It features artifacts, memorabilia and objects discovered beneath the floorboards of the old courthouse.

The old Court Room is part of the museum and visitors can try on wigs and gowns and play mock trials. Built on the site of Perth s first maternity hospital, The Western Australian Medical Museum is a historical museum with exhibits showing facets of medical history and displaying items of memorabilia from the State s past in the health-care field including the inside of an operating room, a dentist s workshop, a working iron lung, hands on displays, doctor sawbones and all the instruments used, world war medical kits, turn of the century hospitals, the discovery of x-rays, an Aboriginal medicine display and hands on electronic equipment where you can watch your own heart beating. Adult admission costs two dollars while admission for children is fifty cents.

Home of cricket in Western Australia, the Western Australian Cricket Association Museum, and otherwise known as the WACA Museum can be found in Perth. Like the name implies, on display here is the history of Western Australian cricket as well as other sports. Exhibits showcasing many of the great names of Western Australian, Australian and International cricket can be found in the Museum; Bradman, Marsh, Sobers, W.G. Grace, the list goes on and on. The WACA Museum even has Mr. D.K. (Dennis) Lillee MBE as its Honorary Patron. The Displays and exhibits give an in-depth insight to cricket, both as a sport as well as to its social history, spanning from the 1800 s to the present day. The feature display rooms include the Local History Room, International Room, The Bat Room, Sir Donald Bradman Room, the Centenary of Federation Room and much more.

Located in Western Australia s oldest military establishment, the historic Artillery Barracks that were established in Fremantle in 1910, the Army Museum of Western Australia is a progressive museum that is part of a national network of museums and collections relating to army heritage coordinated by the Army History Unit. This is a step on the Heritage Trail from Perth and is an integral part of the Fremantle experience. Military collections on display in this museum covers the past to the present, consisting of a series of galleries that encompass the entire colonial and post-federation periods through to the end of World War 2.

A large number of significant military items are on display including a substantial collection of tanks and other armored vehicles, as well as uniforms, medals, weaponry and photographs.