Our plan when we woke up this morning was to visit the gallery and then spend the afternoon at Bondi Beach, but we never made it past the first stop. We never would have had this on our agenda but then yesterday we saw a lady with a bag that said “Ron Mueck” on it. We had seen his exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum roughly 15 years ago and still remember every detail. So when we learned he had a solo exhibit here, we knew we wanted to go to it.

We walked over to the museum and bought the extra ticket for the exhibit. If we had skipped the special exhibit, everything would have been free. The amount of free activities that some cities offer just blows me away.

Millie is terrified of mannequins so we worried she’d be scared of his hyper realistic sculptures, but she did fine. The museum had a workbook for kids that kept her busy.

I loved the work as much as the first time we saw it. The scale and details just sucked me right in. Millie did an amazing job following along with the workbook and sketching based on their prompts. All day long today I’d look over at her and see her plopped down in the middle of things, drawing away.

When she shared her work with us my heart almost fell out.

After we finished at the exhibit, we were intercepted by a nice old lady volunteer who asked if we were heading to “the tank”. “The… tank?” I answered, and she explained that down the staircase was an interactive installation that kids love. We took her advice and headed down the spiral staircase.

This entire area was reimagined by artist Mike Hewson. From their website: “Hewson has reimagined the Tank as a combined park, playground, construction site, and commons – an anarchic and generous sculptural neighbourhood where visitors can meet, dwell, play, make, perform, explore and more.”

It was SO COOL. It had an area with hot plates where people could bring their own food to bbq. There was a steam room and a sauna, swings, a sand pit, a coffee shop, showers, and even a free laundromat. Nothing was off limits.

We spent over an hour in here, exploring and playing. Millie met a German friend, as usual. We can’t tell if there are statistically just a lot of Germans with kids everywhere or if she is especially good at honing in on them.

We left this area and stopped at the cafe for a simple sandwich. Then we went back into the other building of the museum and spent another couple of hours exploring and looking at the art. There were yet more kid’s areas. Millie sat and drew while Nick and I took shifts browsing.

It had a great mix of contemporary and less-contemporary work.

I had to laugh at this Marina Abramović piece, which was commissioned for the Sydney Biennial. I assume they paid her a lot of money and it explained that she spent months in Australia doing research. Then the result was just her doing her normal Abromovic thing of sitting at a table and staring at people, but for Australia she put a boomerang and snake on the table.

For some reason Millie locked in on this video installation and spent 10 minutes just staring at it.

We ended up spending over 5 hours here and still didn’t see it all. I think it may have been one of the best art museums I’ve been too. Extremely diverse art and so much family programming. We got kicked out at 5 when they closed.

We started walking to a restaurant we had read about online but got intercepted halfway when we saw a sign outside a busy and quaint pub that said “Sydney’s oldest pub, since 1828”. We had to stop. We got a beer and ordered dinner.

I surprised Millie with a little Lego pack that I got her earlier in the day. She is only just now getting into Lego and built the castle by herself. It entertained her for the entire meal and then some.

We walked back to our hotel and Millie and Nick are finishing last night’s movie (Jurassic Park). We are moving on from Sydney tomorrow and both agree we could have spent another week here. The rainy days haven’t helped. But better to leave a place wanting more, I guess.