Western Australian Museum

*You can visit us in Fremantle at the WA Maritime Museum and WA Shipwrecks Museum, or at our regional sites: Museum of the Great Southern, Museum of the Goldfields and Museum of Geraldton.

*The Western Australian Museum's Perth site is temporarily closed while the #newmuseumforwa is developed on that site in the Perth Cultural Centre. It is due to reopen in 2020.

*More information about the Western Australian Museum:
Established in 1891 in the Old Perth Gaol, the WA Museum was known as the Geological Museum and its collections were geological, ethnological and biological. In 1897 it officially became the Western Australian Museum and Art Gallery.

During 1959 the botanical collection was transferred to the new Herbarium and the Museum and the Art Gallery became separate institutions. The Museum focused its collecting and research interests in the areas of natural sciences, anthropology, archaeology and the State’s history. Over the 1960s and 1970s it also began to work in the emerging areas of historic shipwrecks and Aboriginal site management.

Today the Western Australian Museum comprises five public sites and a Collections and Research facility, and houses more than 4.5 million objects from rare fossils to the iconic racing yacht Australia II.

The WA Museum also manages 200 shipwreck sites of the 1,500 known to be located off the WA coast and manages eight Aboriginal land reserves.