Day 143 - tourists in Sydney - yet again - part VI

Last few days - Sydney time running down... Today we met an old DeutscheBank colleague of Duncan for an excellent sushi lunch, popped at the QVB again and the Strand shopping arcade 

and then onto the Australia Museum (was v slightly worried it might be too much a repeat of Canberra but not a bit of it : it certainly also covers natural and social history,  but with a very different approach). It kicks off with a novel section on "defensive armour" : ranging from turtle to scaly pangolin to spiny porcupine, from horseshoe crab to 17th century European chain-mail and Aboriginal shield. 

Next was the skeletons section - as well as various commonplace, endangered and extinct specimens, a few light-hearted ones, such as "Home, sweet home"

and, our favourite, "The Bone Ranger".

Highlight for me was the floor of Aboriginal artefacts - Pukumani poles marking burial sites of Tiwi people,

and a presentation on Aboriginal history, including the original land grab and subsequent begrudging return of sacred areas like Ularu, and interviews with NSW Uni students who took a bus around Australia in 1965 - "The Freedom Ride" - to draw attention to racism and discrimination against indigenous people, raising consciousness of the casual apartheid which operated, all of apparently in no small part led to the 1967 Referendum (90+% in favour) on whether, in effect, Aboriginal people were now to be considered citizens and entitled to vote. 

But enough of the politics, there were also more great art works