Dynamic Earth at the Melbourne Museum

Dusty relics on out-of-reach darkened shelves are a thing of the past at the Melbourne Museum. Having just completed $9.5 million worth of redevelopment on their Science and Life Gallery, they have celebrated their tenth birthday in style with the release of Dynamic Earth, the final piece of the new look gallery. It makes sense that this would be the final step the four stage process as it examines the core of the world we inhabit.

Dynamic Earth begins with the focal point of Victoria and then spreads its tentacles across the natural world whilst attempting to maintain a local context. It graphically demonstrates the natural process that shapes our planet in a way that is both accessible and entertaining.

There is an impressive range of natural stones, gems and rocks (including a sample of rock that dates back 3.7 billion years) but the exhibition is much more interactive than a simple display case. There are animatronics, touch-screen displays and a fully immersive 360-degree 3D theatre displaying the Rio Tinto Volcano (by iCinema Centre, UNSW). Not only that, but it is now the most comprehensive natural science display in any Australian museum.

Do all these bells and whistles detract from the science itself? According to, Dr Patrick Greene, the CEO of Museum Victoria, by making the visitors active, it creates a more valuable experience and gives visitors a greater chance to not only understand, but to also enjoy the nitty gritty scientific details, “By making this as involving and as enjoyable as the exhibitions we produce, they [visitors] find themselves immersed in science without even realising it and that’s a great result as far as we’re concerned.”

A former archaeologist, Dr Greene moved to Melbourne from the United Kingdom to take the reins at the Melbourne Museum and says, “It is a great opportunity to run a museum which covers such a broad area and particularly exciting is to bring together all those components, which in a sense feed off each other to produce something particularly innovative and creative. So I’ve been here 8 years now and I have to say that I’ve loved every minute of it.”

Curated by Kate Phillips, Dynamic Earth is just one part of a museum that not only celebrates the past, as we have seen with exhibitions like Titanic, but also examines the world we live in today. An example of this is collecting stories and tokens from recent events, such as the Black Saturday bushfires. As Dr Greene says, “A museum like this is always an unfinished project, there’s always more to do, it’s always important to keep up with what’s going on in the world around us.”

Now that the Science and Life Gallery is complete (for now) the museum will continue working on a new version of the Aboriginal Centre. Working with Indigenous communities across Victoria the centre will tell stories that the community wants to tell – stories of history, culture and Indigenous people today.

Dr Greene tells me that from, “The moment I arrived in Melbourne one of the things that impressed me was the quality of the staff in the museum and the quality of the collections we’ve got, and really part of my job is to make the most of both of those assets and nothing gives me more pleasure than seeing people really grown and flourish in their jobs and enjoy the jobs and communicate that enjoyment to the public. The other satisfaction I get is seeing people come through the doors of the museum.”

Even though Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs was announced last month, there’s still an element of the unknown when working in a place that tells stories that are being updated every day. As Dr Greene says, “You can never tell what’s around the corner in a job like this and that’s one of the things that make it so fascinating.”

Check out some of the Museum and celebrations of the Melbourne Museum’s 10th birthday last month.