Australian National Maritime Museum is one of the world’s “coolest” musuems! The prestige British weekly newspaper The Sunday Times has named the Australian National Maritime Museum one of the top 12 “cool museums” in the world.

In this elite group it ranks with The Science Museum in London, Musee de Quai Branly, Paris, and the American Museum of Natural History, New York. And it’s the only Australian museum on the list.

The article, by travel writers Sean Newsom and Vincent Crump, appeared in this week’s (18 October) issue of The Sunday Times.

“For any visitor,” the article says, “Sydney is defined by its dazzling blue harbour, and that’s what makes a trip to the National Maritime Museum so essential.

“Its fleet of ships of all sizes is limitlessly fascinating, and for an extra charge you can board almost all of them.. There’s a naval destroyer, a submarine, even a Vietnamese fishing boat that docked in Darwin with 31 refugees in 1977.

“Best of all is the Endeavour, an ocean-going reconstruction of the Whitby collier in which Captain Cook ‘discovered’ Australia.”

The full list of the world’s coolest: The Darwin Centre (London), The Science Museum (London), Beamish (Co Durham), Musee de Quai Branly (Paris), Nemo (Amsterdam), Vasamuseet (Stockholm), In Flanders Fields (Ypres), Kennedy Space Centre (Orlando), American Museum of Natural History (New York), Newseum (Washington DC), Australian National Maritime Museum (Sydney), Zigong Dinosaur Museum (China)
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