News and stories

All Western Australian Museum sites will reopen to visitors on Saturday, 6 June.

We cannot wait to welcome people back to our sites, and we can assure everyone that the health and well-being of our visitors, staff, volunteers and contractors is our single most important priority.

Nine new species of pseudoscorpions have been described by Western Australian Museum scientists.

Previously there were 26 species of the Garypus pseudoscorpion known to science, and, of those, only a few came from the Indo-West Pacific region.

One of the greatest animal migrations on the planet takes place along the Western Australian coast every year. From the Kimberley’s Camden Sound to the freezing waters of Antarctica, this 6,500km route is taken by some of the largest animals on Earth, Humpback Whales.

The unique creatures of the Ningaloo Canyons will be studied and catalogued by researchers from the Western Australian Museum in an expedition to the largely unexplored deep sea environment.

Cape Range National Park near Exmouth was once a feeding ground for some of the largest prehistoric predators that ever lived in Earth’s oceans.

Western Australia’s iconic and much-loved blue whale is back, ready for the New Museum opening in November 2020!

The coral-killing sponge Terpios hoshinota has been detected in the Kimberley for the first time by scientists from the Western Australian Museum.

This week, the Culture WA search portal, a free digital platform providing access to 1.6 million items from WA’s main cultural institutions, was launched.

Western Australia's New Museum is among six national finalists for the 2020 Australian Construction Achievement Award.

The award showcases world-class solutions and excellence in construction projects.

An exhibition that transports visitors back more than 2,000 years to one of the most technologically significant times in the history of the western world opens at the WA Maritime Museum this Saturday, 7 December.

The significance of HMAS Ovens

Ovens is an Oberon class submarine which served for over 30 years.

Named after the Irish Australian Explorer John Ovens (1788-1825), Ovens is not only one of Fremantle’s best known landmarks, it is a critical item in the State’s museum collections and a significant part of Australia’s naval history.

For more than 66 years the wrecks of two ships destroyed in what is still Australia’s worst ever naval disaster sat silently on the ocean floor, their location a mystery.