Perth - WA Museum, Art Gallery and Stirling Garden

Hello world,

On Sunday is my second day off and as it was still very cloudy and quite cold (at 21 degrees Celsius) I went into the city of Perth again. This time I aimed for the arts precinct. I first entered the Western Australia Museum which is FREE.

 

First comes the natural section about the sea, the mammals, butterflies and birds. I absolutely loved the butterfly section although it is sad to see these beautiful creatures pinned up like that. But that shows you a small piece of natures amazing variety.

 

Then I went into the Aboriginal part which was quite depressing. The Australian history in regards to their indigenous people is absolutely … shameful, disgusting, unbelievable, shocking. Honestly, I cannot understand how anybody on Earth thought that at that time what they were doing was right…

 

Then I went upstairs into the Dinosaurs to Stars collection which was much better. I spent most of my time there.

The new building is not set up yet, so nothing to see there. At this point you can take the lift downstairs and enter The Discovery Center, especially great for kids.

At 11:30am I have been to all the rooms of the museum and ate lunch before I headed to the State Art Gallery. I went through the different exhibitions and found quite a few interesting and disturbing things. Sometimes I just had to shake my head, for example at a black square with a yellow small line on it. REALLY? That is considered art? But there were some great pieces as well which I enjoyed.

 

At 1pm I was about to leave the museum when they announced a FREE walk through the gallery in regards to contemporary art. I of course joined together with three other people and I got to know so many aspects about contemporary art I would never had found out myself because I wouldn’t know where to find this information or I just wouldn’t bother.

 

The tour lasted for one hour and I was grateful about this insight. Nevertheless I immediately left the gallery to get some sunshine. While I walked past the State Library I decided after this cultural morning to reward myself with some shopping :-)

 

It is summer sales and I got some jeans and a pair of sandals. So the money I earned during the first week in the host family went right there :-) The two main shopping malls (Murray Street Mall and Hay Street Mall) are connected to each other by lots of arcades. At 5pm I finished shopping (also because the shops closed than) and headed to Stirling Garden for some nice pictures of the Town Hall, some architectural highlights, the kangaroo sculptures and the Court House.

 

 After that I took some more pictures of the Bell Tower before I headed back to Manning.

Well, that was my Sunday. Now a week of work (mainly playing with the three children and a bit of housework) lies ahead of me before my next day off on Friday. I will for sure be out to explore the country. Await my next post!

Yours Western-Australia-art-exploring Stefanie