Girt by stories

South Australian Maritime Museum

Opening hours

10am – 5pm everyday (from June 5)

Closed Good Friday & Christmas Day

Where are we

126 Lipson Street, Port Adelaide, 5015
The Museum is a short walk from the Port Adelaide train station and local bus stops.

Admission

Adult: $15.00
Concession: $9.00
Child: $6.00
Family $34.50

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What's On

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The Museum is a short walk from the Port Adelaide train station and local bus stops.

Find us

126 Lipson Street, Port Adelaide, 5015

Daily 10am — 5pm (Closed Good Friday & Christmas Day)

What’s happening at @sa_maritime_museum

  • We look forward to welcoming visitors to the Museum when we reopen from Friday 5 June, just in time for the long weekend. More details to come. @historysa #museums #SouthAustralia
  • In this time of social isolation, our mobile phones have become even more of a necessity. Through them we can call loved ones, FaceTime friends, and share our new hobbies with endless snapshots on social media. #TechnologyMW has changed dramatically. Once a photograph was a precious artefact and posing for it, a significant day. The Port’s largely working class population could only afford a photographic portrait to mark major rites of passage - weddings, graduations, soldiers and sailors going off to war, and sporting victories. The Museum owns 2000 glass plate negatives from the studio of AE Bond in Port Adelaide. Bond set up his studio in 1901 and many local families documented their special days posing against his lush painted canvas backdrop. The only hint we have of who these people are, is a surname scratched on the bottom of the glass plate. Next month we will be providing a link to these digitised images on our website. Stay tuned!
  • World wars defined the 20th century. The impact of climate change may well be the defining phenomenon of this one. In 2015, the Maritime Museum partnered with local artistic company Vitalstatistix on Climate Century - a project inviting contemporary artists to work with local communities, scientists, and environmentalists to respond to the question “How will we commemorate and memorialise the climate century?” Opening on Wednesday 11 November (Remembrance Day) 2015, the first instalment of Climate Century were exhibitions at the museum and various spaces along Lipson Street. Informed by the insights of local environmentalists, artists from a variety of disciplines were asked to imagine the climate futures of the coastal and river environs of Port Adelaide and the Lefevre Peninsula. In the Museum, we got a whiff of what that future might smell like. In Century’s Breath, artist Cat Jones invited museum audiences to help her create scents that evoked the natural and built environment of the Lefevre Peninsula – one hundred years from now. FUMO and ABANDONMENT were some of the less appealing perfumes conjured up. Others had a more positive take on the future with DUSK GARDEN, BEAUTIFUL LIFE and INFINTELY NATURAL... #ClimateMW
  • There is nothing like a little time apart to make the heart grow fonder. Today we reflect on our finest and favourite #MuseumMomentsMW Our exhibition roll call is nothing if not eclectic... We have showcased exhibitions on the history of whaling and the mighty creature at the heart of the hunt (Leviathan), the gruesome history of medicine at sea (Rough Medicine), the breathtaking paintings of French explorer Baudin’s scientific artists (The Art of Science). We have explored our local history, offering audiences glimpses into the Port’s shuttered buildings and secret nooks ( Hidden Port), a past Port though the eyes of local tailor and artist John Giles ( Captured on Canvas) and profiled our love and legacy of Messing about in Boats. Our public programs dished up Breakfast with Baudin (a sensory foray into foods foraged on French expeditions), the history of a tipple at sea (Shiploads of Beer), fashion shows profiling the ever-morphing silhouette of swimwear (Exposed) and how whalebone shaped the female form (Waisted). We have inhabited the museum with ghosts of port identities (Haunted), celebrated Last Drinks on the Titanic, and scoured West Terrace Cemetery searching for stories of drownings and shipwrecks (Drowning,not Waving). During school holidays, our replica ketch in the centre of the museum has hosted barber surgeons, stinky scientists, discombobulated pirates, and a spinach-chugging Popeye. What are your magical museum moment?

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South Australian Maritime Museum

The South Australian Maritime Museum and History Trust of South Australia acknowledges the First Nations peoples of South Australia, whose connection to country and living cultures began in time immemorial and continues to the present. We affirm our commitment to advancing reconciliation.