Museum of Central Australia — Attraction in Araluen

Shocking! Out of date, weird & offensive. Such a shame international and interstate tourists will see this ‘museum’ as a trusted source of information to represent central Australia?! Please - don’t go!!

The information provided is out of date and misleading! Also heavily (exclusively) presented from colonial view point.

E.G. The ‘museum’ tells audiences that Thylacines became extinct as a result of the harsh conditions of central Aus and other dominant animals… no mention that white settlers decimated the species with encouraged hunting between 1830-1920’s…

The display of taxidermy animals showing species introduced by white settlers was conveniently the only section without a wall label to describe the (catastrophic) affect these animals had on the native wildlife….

No mention or display on the (catastrophic) affect to soil health that colonial introduced hoofed animals have had…

THEN the current exhibition ‘A Frontier Journey’! Lordy! If downstairs wasn’t weird enough, upstairs is worse! They provide a small ‘sorry not sorry’ about any offensive language to Aboriginal viewers - ‘because it’s historical so we gotta keep it in!’. The offensive language was used to label each photograph (which didn’t follow museum or gallery wall labelling protocol anyway - so I’m unsure why they felt the need to use descriptions from a personal photograph album so strictly - knowing it would in fact offend many people) as a means of wall labelling… a large portion of the wall labels provided little to no context anyway?! So weird.

Only positives… the lovely staff member up the front...

Great place to go and get a service, it is great and staff are very nice people and the drinks were good too I highly highly suggest going on in several different place and will have more experience in their services especially the drinks they offer you and the owner very much highly interested and I would love to come back from a place to visit if they were interested in the area in a city or a place to eat here and I have been highly impressed with the service I highly recommend it for the drinks highly and a very cool service highly love this service place and service ewas ueueI is a good time to get the service and the owner of a place to visit for drinks or service is ea I think you should see what a big bag of dog you might be...

Relatively small, but interesting museum about 20-30 min walk from the central part of town. It’s located in the same complex as a few other galleries/museums, tho only the Araluen Centre was open the day we went.

The ground floor has a fascinating geological and native animal collection, including some cool meteorites, and the upstairs has a somewhat problematic, but nevertheless interesting collection of photos by Otto Tschirn showing white settlers/missionaries posing with indigenous children and locals with signs describing how they lived together in harmony. Obviously just one side of the story.

Overall, interesting place to explore when in Alice Springs, but be sure to also visit the Araluen...