Sydney Life

Just like Joni Mitchell said, you don't know what you've got til it's gone.
I'm due to finish my studies here in less than three months, and I have only just realised that my weekly visits to the Nicholson Museum will have to wind up, too.

At Sydney Uni, we're lucky enough to have lots of museums and art galleries at our fingertips. So many, in fact, that I can't name them all. Some of them are only for members of certain faculties, but a small number are open to the public. We have the Rare Book Collection at Fisher Library, the War Memorial Art Gallery, the Macleay Musuem, the Tin Sheds Gallery, the Sir Hermann Black Art Gallery and my personal favourite, the Nicholson Museum.

The Nicholson is a sanctuary for ancient history buffs. I, however, am no aficionado of the classical world: the Nicholson has been my informal teacher for the past four years.

That's the great thing about being at Sydney Uni: your learning isn't confined to the classroom, you're learning by osmosis ALL THE TIME.

The Nicholson has taught me so many interesting things. For instance:
*Agatha Christie was married to an archaeologist, and was reputed to have said, "The great thing about marrying an archaeologist is that the older I get, the more interested in me he becomes." Nice one, Aggie.
*in the 19th century, it was fashionable to buy mummies and host dinner parties, at which you would unwrap them over a glass of red. If you weren't wealthy enough to buy your own mummy, you could go to a public unwrapping. Ready? One, two, three...ewwww.
*the paintings you see on mummies are really significant - just by looking at the pictures on a mummy's coffin, an archaeologist can tell if the mummy is male or female, royal or civilian.
*Agatha Christie contributed to the discovery of the ancient world with her face cream! Yep - the super sleuth gave her hubby a jar of her face cream to remove dirt and debris from artefacts. It was more effective than brushes or water, and kept the fragile objects intact.
*Mummies are so perfectly preserved by the mummification process that their skin will still be intact if we were to unwrap one today. And, even more creepily, they sometimes smell like honey when they are unwrapped, because the Egyptians soaked the bandages in honey before using them on the mummy.

The Museum has collections from Egypt, Cyprus, Europe, the Near East and the Classical World. In addition, there are rotating exhibitions and the museum staff are more than willing to tell you a little more about the artefacts.

Entry to our museums is free, and they're right there on campus: you have no excuse not to check them out!