science

Queensland Museum

Queensland Museum is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Queensland Museum rather than just read about it. In short: The Queensland Museum is the state museum of Queensland, funded by the Queensland Government, of natural history, cultural heritage, science and human achievement. The museum, operating under the Queensland Museum Act 1970, has custody of over 15.2 million items relating to the State's natural and cultural heritage, including those from the Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Pacific Indigenous cultures.

Key takeaways

Queensland Museum belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Queensland Museum to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Queensland Museum from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Queensland Museum is the state museum of Queensland, funded by the Queensland Government, of natural history, cultural heritage, science and human achievement. The museum, operating under the Queensland Museum Act 1970, has custody of over 15.2 million items relating to the State's natural and cultural heritage, including those from the Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Pacific Indigenous cultures.

History

The Queensland Museum was founded by the Queensland Philosophical Society on 20 January 1862, one of the principal founders being Charles Coxen, and had several temporary homes in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The temporary homes included The Old Windmill (1862–1869), Parliament House (1869–1873) and the General Post Office (1873–1879). In 1875 alone, the museum saw over 25,500 visitors over its 310 days open to the zoological, mineralogical, ethnological, mechanical, literary, and artistic exhibitions. At this time, exhibits totalled 6,027. The government built a home for the museum in William Street, Brisbane City (later called the John Oxley State Library), with the Queensland Museum moving there in 1879. The museum occupied the William Street location for 20 years. In 1899, the Queensland Museum moved into the Exhibition Hall (now called the Old Museum), Gregory Terrace, Bowen Hills, Brisbane, remaining there for 86 years. In 1986, the Queensland Museum moved to the Queensland Cultural Centre, South Bank, where the museum is adjacent to the Queensland Art Gallery. Both a tunnel and pedestrian bridge connect the Museum and Art Gallery buildings with the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Three lifts were added to the bridge in 2004 to provide access to the platforms of the Cultural Centre busway station. A large sculpture of a cicada was located in front of the centre lift, but was removed in 2022 to make way for construction of the Brisbane Metro. In 1987, the Queensland Museum Medal was created to recognise recipients for major contributions in research and other works. Awardees include palaeontologist Professor Mike Archer, Professor Don Nicklin, palaeontologist Dr Mary Wade, Dr Alan Bartholomai, Steve Irwin, Dr Steve Van Dyck, Anne Jones, Sir David Attenborough, Dr John Hooper, and Professor Peter Andrews.

Curators and directors 1872–1879 – Karl Theodor Staiger (died 1888) (first professional curator) 1910–1918 – Ronald Hamlyn-Harris (1874–1953) (former science teacher at Toowoomba Grammar School) 1918–1945 – Albert Heber Longman (1880–1954) 1946–1963 – George Mack (1899–1963), ex-Sydney museum, then senior scientific assistant 1964–1969 – Jack Tunstall Woods ISO, former QM geologist 1969 – c. 1989 – Dr Alan Bartholomai AM (1938–2015).

Sites The museum operates from its headquarters and general museum in South Brisbane ("Kurilpa") with specialist museums elsewhere in the state. A separate collections and research centre is based at Hendra.

South Brisbane ("Kurilpa") Queensland Museum Kurilpa at South Brisbane is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre complex, alongside the State Library of Queensland, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Gallery of Modern Art and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. It was opened at this site in 1986, and features several permanent exhibitions:

Anzac Legacy Gallery, including "Mephisto", the only surviving A7V Sturmpanzerwagen tank from World War I; Dinosaurs Unearthed: Explore: Prehistoric Queensland gallery; Wild State gallery; Discovery Centre gallery; and SparkLab. In 2023, "Kurilpa" was added to the museum's name.

Ipswich ("Rail Workshops")

Queensland Museum Rail Workshops, located in North Ipswich, was added to the network in 2002. Based in its birthplace, the Workshops' exhibitions explore the evolution of Queensland Rail, with over 17 000 State Collection items. Hosting community events, the annual Day out with Thomas is popular with visitors.

Toowoomba ("Cobb+Co")

Queensland Museum Cobb+Co, located in East Toowoomba, was added to the network in 1986. From the efforts of businessman Bill Bolton (1905–1973), Cobb+Co is the home of the National Carriage Collection of near fifty horse-drawn vehicles including stagecoaches.

Townsville ("Tropics")

Queensland Museum Tropics, located in the Townsville City central business district, was added to the network in 1986. The exhibitions focus more on the Queensland's cultures, customs, and environments of the north, including an extensive maritime heritage collection surrounding the wreck of HMS Pandora (1779) which foundered on the Great Barrier Reef in 1791.

Museum of Lands, Mapping and Surveying The museum opened in 1982 and is in Edward Street, Brisbane. In 1988 the Queensland Museum became its custodian.

Exhibitions

World Science Festival Brisbane The Queensland Museum Network holds exclusive licence to host the World Science Festival in the Asia Pacific region. The inaugural World Science Festival Brisbane was held in 2016. The festival runs in March each year, based at QM Kurilpa, with regional satellite events having taken place in Toowoomba, Townsville and Chinchilla, Queensland.

Changing exhibitions The various sites host exhibitions and may rotate exhibitions between sites. Over the years these have included:

Afghanistan: Hidden treasures from the National Museum, Kabul (5 September 2013 – 27 January 2014) was a major touring exhibition showcasing 230 priceless objects from between 2200 BC and AD 200, with a glimpse into the world of the ancient Silk Road and some of the most remarkable archaeological finds in all of Central Asia. This included jewellery, sculpture and gold work. Mummy: Secrets of the tomb (19 April – 21 October 2012) was a major exhibition of four Egyptian mummies and over 100 pieces from the British Museum, London. Gladiators: Heroes of the Colosseum (June 2017 – 28 January 2018) Egyptian mummies: Discovering ancient lives (16 March – 26 August 2018) Discovering Ancient Egypt (2024 – 17 August 2025), an exhibition from the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.

Repatriation of human remains and objects The Museum's program of returning and reburying ancestral remains and cultural property belonging to Indigenous Australians, which had been collected by the museum between 1870 and 1970, has been under way since the 1970s. As of November 2018, the Museum had the remains of 660 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people stored in a "secret sacred room" at the QM Kurilpa site.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Queensland Museum

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Queensland Museum claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Queensland Museum before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Queensland Museum ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Queensland Museum

In research: Queensland Museum appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Queensland Museum in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Queensland Museum is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1862 establishments in Australia, Landmarks in Brisbane, Local museums in Australia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Queensland Museum outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Queensland Museum in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Queensland Museum means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Queensland Museum out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Queensland Museum in simple terms?

Why does Queensland Museum matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Queensland Museum?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Queensland Museum.