Still a powerful museum experience

Not just a science museum, Ultimo's Powerhouse Museum is the main site of the Museum of Arts and Sciences. It's housed in the old powerhouse building of the electric tram system, and it's quite an institution.

As well as science and technology, it deals with transport, decorative arts, design, media, communication, and lots more. A visit is quite an education.

I first visited the Powerhouse in the 1980s, shortly after it was rehoused in its current spectacular lodgings. I've been back once or twice, and last week it was time to catch up with it once more. It might be the last time too, with much talk of its impending destruction and/or exile to Parramatta and/or duplication. Who knows what the final outcome will be, but the State Government seems to have all kinds of secretive plans for it, all probably involving wins for property developers and losses for us, the public.

Among the probably immovable exhibits is the enormous Boulton-Watt steam engine, said to be the oldest working rotative one in the world.

There's even a nice little corner devoted to space exploration. It includes a section of International Space Station mock-up, which pretends to rotate around you, giving you a very disorienting experience to simulate, sort of, not knowing up from down, as you wouldn't.


And there's the obligatory section of hands-on science education exhibits, like the 'Zap the plasma ball' Van de Graaff machine.