This place in Circular Quay is worth popping into. The two exhibitions I saw, by Edwin Wurm and Ron Mueck, were both been fun and thought provoking. You don't need to be a great art lover to like this place. The cafe attached has great food too

140 George Street, The Rocks;
tel: 9245 2400;
www.mca.com.au

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There are plenty of museums in Sydney - some good, some decidedly average. The Museum of Sydney ($7) tells the story of the city from 1788 to the present, and although small is extremely interesting. Also worth a look is the nearby Hyde Park Barracks Museum ($7), built by convicts in 1818, which shows the history of the fledgling community through the people who were housed there - convicts, immigrants and soldiers. Finally the Powerhouse Museum ($10) is a fun and massive collection devoted to science, transport and technology - where you could spend hours. Kids will love it.

On the downside is the Australian Museum (£10). Despite having been there three times, I've always felt let down at the size and content. For such a huge building, there really is precious little on display apart from the ubiquitous animal bones and minerals. If you can make it over to Canberra, the National Museum of Australia there is far, far better.

MoS - cnr Phillip/Bridge Sts, city centre
HPBM - Queens Square, Macquarie St, city centre
Powerhouse - Harris St, Ultimo (Central station)
Australian Museum - College St, Hyde Park

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It is a branch of the harbour in the city centre containing wonderful restaurants, a shopping centre, a convention centre, a glamorous casino, a maritime museum, an aquarium, chinese and japanese gardens, an IMAX cinema, and the Powerhouse Museum (a power station converted into a costume museum and other wonders).

via Monorail from the shopping district

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The ferry between Darling Harbour and Circular Quay gives you one of the best views of the Harbour Bridge as you actually sail under it. It is a fitting end to a visit to the Australian Maritime Museum. This free museum is well set out and has plenty to keep children interested while still being fascinating to adults. It includes some naval vessels such as a submarine but there is a charge for going aboard.

Pyrmont Wharf, Darling Harbour

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Instead of paying ridiculous amounts of money to put on an ugly grey suit and be frog-marched up the bridge, why not walk across the whole bridge, and make your way up the pylon (200 steps) to visit the bridge's museum? The views are similar and the museum is interesting. Walking across the bridge is free, the museum costs around £3. Compare this to Bridge Climb that costs around £70.

If coming from the Rocks, enter from Cumberland Street. The other entrance is near Milsons Point or you can enter via Observatory Hill/ Kent Street.

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Some British visitors to Australia are put off indulging in one of its greatest attractions, swimming in the sea, for exaggerated fear of the beasties lurking therein.

A supervised dive at the Oceanworld aquarium in Manly might prove an antidote to such an aversion. The big sharks here, the Grey Nurses, are, like the rest of the swimming displays - among them enormous, velvety black rays and constantly curious little Dog Sharks - too well fed to consider nibbling on you. But even were that not the case, the jaws of the Grey Nurses are, despite their fearsome appearance, quite the wrong shape to make lunch of one of your body parts.

Sharks should probably fear humans at least as much as the reverse: many of them, such as the Grey Nurses, have become endangered due to fishing and other human activities. You can also simply view the aquarium animals through the glass.

Oceanworld Manly:
West Esplanade, Manly
+61 2 9949 7950

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At at time when British museums are increasingly bowing to the cult of "accessibility", with its concomitant tendency to infantilise visitors, I liked the burst of poetry in one of the captions at the Australian National Maritime Museum: “Surfing is a look, an ideology, a spiritual quest, an adrenalin rush, a cult of cool, a burst of rage, even a religion.”

Sydney is, perhaps pre-eminently, a maritime city, as the museum quite convincingly proves. There are displays on the history of surfing, swimming apparel and shipping: the story of the wreck of the Batavia in the 17th century (although actually off the western Australian coast) is particularly gripping, not to say chilling. A whole section is devoted to the enduring Aboriginal relationship with the water.

The museum design is pleasingly open and spacious; indeed, the building is meant to resemble a ship.

2 Murray Street, Darling Harbour
+61 2 9298 3777
open daily
free admission

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The Historic Houses Trust manage a few museums around the city, and it's a good idea to check out the site before you go. In any case, their head office is in the historic Mint building on Macquarie Street, where you can buy tickets for their museums as well as look at the beautiful Georgian architecture.

The Trust manage some of Sydney's more fascinating colonial buildings, and will give you an insight into the difficulties posed to the early colony. There are two harbourside mansions in their 'collection' – Elizabeth Bay House, a fine regency villa, and Vaucluse House, that began life as a cottage in 1803. Both have educational displays and antiques on site, and in particular Vaucluse House is set within beautiful grounds.

They also manage the Museum of Sydney, which is in the city. This museum looks at the interesting history of Sydney from convict times through to the present. A short detour from the Museum of Sydney would be the Hyde Park Barracks, which shows life as a convict in the early 19th century.

Most venues have a book/gift shop, and some have cafes.

www.hht.net.au
The head office is at the Mint, 10 Macquarie Street.
Infoline 02 8239 2442

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