Another day, another museum. Except this one was unlike any of the others we’ve been to.

MONA is billionaire Tasmanian David Walsh’s brainchild / gift to Hobart / ego trip. Nick told me last night that Walsh made his fortune on “gambling” and so I assumed he owned a bunch of casinos in Australia and Asia, but no, he made over a billion dollars as a gambler. I have no idea how that is possible, but apparently it is.

He has then invested it all into an insane and strange museum in his hometown of Hobart. I went into it full of judgement and expecting to hate it. The headline in my head was like: Billionaire white man makes money from illicit industry and then blows it all on a self-serving compound of pretentious art. This is an entirely true statement, but I was wrong and absolutely loved it.

Starting from the top… today was chilly and so we bundled up to walk over to the ferry terminal. We could have driven but the ferry sounded more fun. The ferry itself was run by the museum, and the fun started from the dock. The announcements were silly and the boat had fake animals to sit on.

It was a 25 minute ride and an interesting way to see Hobart. When we arrived we walked the steps up to the top where there’s a great view and some installations, including a large James Turrell.

You enter the museum by going down a spiral staircase, which feels like your a corkscrewing down into the earth. It’s carved into the side of a mountain but feels underground.

A couple of things I loved about it… there were no placards. Instead, we downloaded an app and could open it and it would tell us about the work. This could have been terrible but it worked really well and let you really experience the art as it was before learning anything about it. Second, everything was all mixed up together. Actual Egyptian artifacts next to a modern sculpture of an artist autofellating, why not?

Here are some of my favorite pieces.

The dropped water droplets every second, each spelling a random word that was generated from news headlines. Some seemed very random but then we saw “Hormuz” “Oscar’s” and other very current ones.

The was a large circle that spun slowly while oil dropped down. It was mesmerizing.

The same artist had a huge room that dropped fireworks from the ceiling at random intervals. My photos don’t do justice for any of his work but it was all very thrilling.

There was a lot of body horror type stuff. This one below made us laugh but also fascinated us: a poop machine! It was an actual synthetic poop maker. This employee feeds it twice a day with a dish from the fancy onsite restaurant, and the food passes through various tubes and containers of acids and then is pooped out once a day. It is commentary on art being shit.

We walked into this room of a wall with people singing Madonna songs and a sculpture of a legless woman directly in front of it.

Imagine my shock when the woman moved and rolled out. Turns out she was just a museum visitor and not a piece of art.

Live goldfish swimming around in a bowl with a knife.

At this point we were all overwhelmed so we resurfaced for lunch. They had an incredible playground that Millie ran around on while we ate. They had a live jazz band playing and the vibes were just all around good.

Once we were full and got our wiggle out, we went back down to finish seeing everything.

Millie was bored so Nick made her a customized scavenger hunt with things to find. She had so much fun with this that then she made him one in return. This allowed us to see everything.

Outside there was an installation that was a “room of mirrors”. Very fun for a 5 year old.

We spent the entire day here and then took the 5pm ferry back. We had a quick dinner of oysters, fish pie, and a fish sandwich by the dock. I think I’m finally ready to admit it: I don’t like oysters.

We walked back to our little house, talking all about the unexpected oddities and massive undertaking that was this museum. Thinking about taking up gambling so that I can do something similar…