Thursday, 27 July 2017

UNE's Natural History Museum

Over thee last 2-3 years the University of New England (UNE) has been constructing a large and new Agricultural Building very close to where my office is located, and I often witnessed its progress as I walked "to work" from my car. The building was opened in 2016 but until this last weekend I had never stepped inside, although I was a aware that UNE was developing its version of the Smithsonian in there in the form of a large collection of rocks, stuffed creatures of various kinds, dinosaur remains and so on.

Well, this weekend the Vice Chancellor held an open day for Armidale's public to come along and see some of our natural history treasures and we decided to go along and have a look at the offerings. So did a large number of other people - perhaps in the thousands - and when we got there the building was crammed with bodies (alive by the way).

I won't describe each exhibit, because they're blindingly obvious.

















In addition, the building's laboratories had some hand-on exhibits like sand-pits with buried bits of skeletons or rocks. The whole museum was excellent and attracted a large number of children who must have learned a lot about the natural world.

AS

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