Melbourne Museum: Tickets and Info

Dinosaur Walk is Melbourne Museum's permanent gallery of prehistoric skeletons, home to twelve dinosaurs and Australian megafauna, including a Diprotodon (the world's largest marsupial) and Megalania (Australia's largest lizard). Touch displays let visitors handle real dinosaur teeth and feel the thigh bone of a 25-tonne sauropod.

The gallery's centrepiece is Horridus, a Triceratops horridus skeleton found on private land in Montana in 2014 and acquired by Museums Victoria in 2020. At roughly 85% complete — including a 98%-complete skull and full vertebral column — it's considered one of the most complete Triceratops skeletons ever found. The 67-million-year-old fossil measures nearly 7 metres long and stands over 2 metres tall, and went on public display at Melbourne Museum in March 2022 after being assembled from eight shipping crates.

Walk around, under and through the skeletons to get a genuine sense of scale that photographs can't capture.

The Forest Gallery is a living, indoor recreation of a Victorian mountain forest — not a diorama, but a real, changing ecosystem behind glass doors, complete with tall eucalypts, ferns and misty, damp air.

Native wildlife moves freely through the space: wrens, a Tawny Frogmouth and a Satin Bowerbird that decorates its bower with blue objects share the gallery with native fish and spiny crayfish living in a creek that runs through it. The plants and animals respond to the seasons, so birds nest, flowers bloom and fungi fruit at different times of year — the gallery genuinely looks different depending on when you visit.

A reconstructed chimney, salvaged from the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, sits within the gallery as a reminder of fire's dual role in the Australian landscape — both destructive and, over time, regenerative. The gallery also connects to Biik Milboo Dhumba | Country Is Always Talking, a First Nations perspective on connection to Country featuring the sculpture The Sacred Tree of Our Songlines by Robert Young.

Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre is Melbourne Museum's dedicated space for the living cultures, history and stories of Victoria's First Peoples, developed in partnership with Aboriginal communities across the state.

Its centrepiece is the First Peoples exhibition, shaped by the First Peoples Yulendj Group of Elders and community representatives, who contributed knowledge, stories, objects and images. It moves through several sections: Wominjeka (Welcome) introduces the Countries and languages of Aboriginal Victoria; Generations shares personal stories and photographs spanning ages 8 to 72; Many Nations displays close to 500 artefacts from across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia; and Our Story traces Victoria's First Peoples from Creation to today.

Highlights include Deep Listening, a multimedia piece where Koorie people share stories of resilience, and Bunjil's Wings, a kinetic sculpture depicting the Creation Ancestor Bunjil. Bunjilaka also hosts the outdoor Milarri Garden Trail and the Wurreka exhibition.

Phar Lap's mounted hide has stood at Melbourne Museum since January 1933 — the museum's single most popular exhibit for over 90 years.

Foaled in New Zealand, Phar Lap became Australia's most celebrated racehorse during the Great Depression, winning 36 of the 41 races he ran between September 1929 and November 1931, including the 1930 Melbourne Cup. Known as 'Bobby' to strapper Tommy Woodcock and 'Red Terror' to owner Harry Telford, his sudden death in California in 1932 — still debated by historians — triggered nationwide mourning and turned him into a lasting symbol of hope during hard times.

Alongside the mounted hide, the display includes personal items from his racing career: his training saddle, racing shoes, a tonic book and jockey silks, plus the 1930 Cox Plate trophy, together with letters sent to Harry Telford by grieving members of the public after Phar Lap's death.

The Pauline Gandel Children's Gallery is Melbourne Museum's dedicated space for babies through 5-year-olds, built around hands-on, open-ended play rather than look-but-don't-touch displays.

Inside, themed zones include a Dinosaur Dig where children unearth fossils, a Discovery Garden for exploring plants, a Camouflage Disco where projections turn children into patterned animals as they dance, and a soft climbing net (for ages 5 and under, with a carer). Outdoors, there are rock tunnels, stepping stones and a nature play area with a large sandpit.

Good to know: entry requires a separate, free timed-entry booking in addition to general museum admission, due to capacity limits. Sessions run for 50 minutes, and only one session per family is available per visit day, so it's worth booking your slot online before you arrive.