Port Macquarie Museum
Located in the centre of town, the Port Macquarie Museum preserves the area’s history from colonial settlement and its dependance on the timber industry to the tourist destination it is today.
Parking is available on street, or you can walk there from your accommodation, depending where you are staying.
The Museum
Divided into eight themed rooms and galleries the museum is well laid out and curated with many interesting exhibits. The room detailing Port Macquarie’s convict past has a full size display of a man receiving the lash as punishment for a misdemeanor. Somewhat graphic, it does show how brutal Australia’s past was.
An interesting room called the Street of Shops displays artifact collections as if they were is a window display. The entire room is setup to look like a street with shop windows. Each window has its own themed display from timepieces to a dentist’s surgery.
Port Macquarie’s past relied heavily on the timber industry; particularly cedar which grew locally. A large room shows how the timber was processed and what it was used for. Unfortunately, the harvesting of so much cedar means it is now a rare tree to find in the wild.
This was an interesting museum to visit and learn more about the local history.
This looks like an interesting museum. Don’t those old dentist and doctors office exhibits give you the creeps?
They really do. Dentists are not my favorite place to visit and old ones look worse.
Agreed!
I love museums, especially like this one. And I read the other comments and the dentist office in particular is creepy looking !
The old regional museum are great to look around, I agree. They usually have things on display the larger ones don’t want. Except dentist chairs, they could all do without those on display.