Powerhouse Discovery Centre

Reporter: Sally Obermeder

 

The Powerhouse Museum has recently opened up a new facility and it’s choc o block full of golden oldies and relic from the past … who can resist a trip down memorabilia lane?

 

For the first time in its 128-year history the Powerhouse Museum, Australia’s premier museum of science, technology, history and design, has opened its major offsite storage facility to the public.

 

 

The Powerhouse Discovery Centre: Collection Stores at Castle Hill is one of only a few publicly-accessible museum storage facilities in Australia which is part of a growing worldwide trend by major museums to enhance collection access. Located on a 2.8 hectare site at the major junction of Windsor and Showground Roads in Castle Hill, six large warehouse-style buildings covering 13,000 square metres house one of the world’s greatest collections of science, technology, design, decorative arts and social history.

 

The Powerhouse Discovery Centre aims to showcase more of the Museum’s world-class collection and give a behind-the-scenes view of the museum world. The aim is to lift the curtain on a working museum to show a more direct and raw view of an intriguing collection. 

 

  

Visitors are offered an insight into the complex and meticulous world of object preservation which is rarely shown. Like most museums, only a small per cent of collections are ever on display at any one time. For 60 years, the Powerhouse’s major off-site storage complex at Castle Hill has been off limits to the public. Now the public has access to around 40 per cent (by volume), 50,000 objects, of the Museum’s stored collection.

 

There are wonderful objects which have never been seen or rarely displayed at the Powerhouse, like Harry’s Café de Wheels famous pie caravan from the 1940s, the familiar Leyland double-decker bus, the ingenious Standfield and Co. machine that made 100 million mousetraps over 50 years and the Olympic Torch carried by Cathy Freeman to light the cauldron at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. 

 

The centrepiece of the Powerhouse Discovery Centre is the self-guided Display Store - an imposing two-storey building in which thousands of objects can be seen. On the ground floor is the main entrance foyer that introduces the history of the site and how the store can be explored, and showcases the magnificent transport objects, affectionately known as the ‘big toys’. These include historic steam engines, cars, trams, planes, buses and tractors.

 

On the first floor are numerous, themed drawer displays with smaller objects alongside larger, freestanding ones, demonstrating the depth and breadth of the Powerhouse Collection.

 

Visits to four other storage buildings will be arranged through booked themed tours. The Powerhouse Discovery Centre holds a public open day to the Display Store and booked tours on the second Saturday of every month from 10am to 5pm. Admission applies to both the monthly open days and booked tours.

 

More Information Powerhouse Discovery Centre 172 Showground Road, Castle Hill Telephone: (02) 9762 1300 www.castlehill.powerhousemuseum.com It’s open on the second Saturday of every month and costs $8 for adults and $5 for the kids.

 

 Prices correct as at 08/09/07