News and stories

Over its 120 year history the Western Australian Museum has often received donations of collections from members of the public that provide unique insights into the people and places of WA.

Honorary researcher from the Monash University’s Indigenous Centre, Dr Sue Taffe, will speak at the Western Australian Museum – Kalgoorlie-Boulder on the move for equal rights by indigenous Australians in the 1960s and the important role that Kalgoorlie played in this.

Meteorites and related materials have been used for human adornment for millennia. The oldest examples come from the tombs of ancient Egypt, but the practice of making jewellery continues to the present day.

Four hundred years ago a sailing voyage from Europe to Java, via Madagascar, would take almost 12 months, with an enormous toll on the health of all aboard.

For up to 8,000 years the fauna on many of the 170 islands that make up the Houtman Abrolhos off Geraldton have evolved in isolation, providing a fascinating laboratory in which to study adaptive patterns in many species.

An independent camera network set up in the Nullarbor desert is making it possible to track and recover observed meteorite falls, as well as identify their origin in the Solar System.

In a WA Museum first, people will be able to follow virtually the action of a real scientific field expedition into the many caves beneath the Nullarbor Plain.

In the last century our view of the Universe and our place within it has undergone a revolution every bit as dramatic as Galileo's assertion 400 years prior that the Earth was not the centre of the Solar System.

There are more than a thousand shipwrecks located along the Western Australian coastline, however due to a combination of biological deterioration and the movement of water and sand the majority of WA wrecks are rarely found intact

For up to 8,000 years the fauna on many of the 170 islands that make up the Houtman Abrolhos off Geraldton have evolved in isolation, providing a fascinating laboratory in which to study adaptive patterns in many species.

Western Australia is home to a variety of fascinating and ancient creepy crawlies, such as centipedes, spiders and scorpions. Are they dangerous? When should we be concerned, and when should we be delighted to have them in our neighbourhood?