203. Maritime Museum

The is rated one of the best and most well maintained museums in Sydney so we were eager to see what the chat was all about. Unfortunately we arrived quite late in the day and only had a couple of hours to see the whole thing. Luckily for us (or unluckily depending on your point of view) most of it was shut for renovation – but since these parts of the museum are free there was no financial loss. This meant we actually only got to climb the lighthouse to look at the harbour views which we followed up with a tour of the Endeavour replica (for the additional fee of $15).

The light house was quite cool. 74 steps up a spiral staircase saw us at the top of this lighthouse which used to be located near Townsville and after being decommissioned was dismantled and rebuilt at the Darling Harbour site for the benefit of the general public. The views from up there gave a good panoramic of the area with a lovely backdrop of the city skyline it didn’t compare to the one from the Sydney Tower or the night time view afforded by Star City Casio.

After that we made out way round the replica of the Endeavour which recently had it’s 14th birthday. We actually thought that it was the original until someone (who thought we were being a bit “special”) told us that the real one is at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Rhode Island and was sunk on purpose (with 9 other ships) during the War of Independence as deliberate obstacles against the British Navy.

The tour round the boat was made personal by the guides – all of whom are part of the permanent crew or who have done a few volunteer trips on the replica. They knew it backwards and had ridiculous amounts of knowledge about the history of the ship and its original crew members. We could have paid to go on HMAS Vampire and the submarine that they have there as well but time, unfortunately, was against us and by the time we left the Endeavour the museum was almost closing. Really, quite a fascinating couple of hours but a shame that some of the other areas were closed.