At Christmas, I went on holiday to Perth, Western Australia to visit family. While I was there, I took an afternoon out of the festivities to spend a few hours at the Aviation Heritage Museum in Perth. Well, it would have been rude not to have visited!

The Museum is run by the local RAAF Association and is, generally, a well-presented museum with an excellent collection of aircraft. However, this does not mean it is not without its faults. I will not labour on them too much, but it suffers from several issues. First, it tries to tell too many stories. Regional museums such as this should focus on the local story and leave the broader context to national institutions. Yes, some context is needed, but less is more in this area. Added to this, there was too much text. Again, this is not unusual, but the truth is that few people spend hours reading copious amounts of text. The other critical issue for me, which links to the first challenge, is that there were simply too many artefacts on display. I suspect that this is an outgrowth of a lack of storage, though I could be wrong. As such, all of the items are on display. This is a shame because, as such, some of the jewels in the collection get lost. Nevertheless, there are some great pieces on display with a good range of aircraft on display including an Avro Lancaster, GAF Canberra, C-47 Dakota, and Catalina. Below are a few edited photos that I took during my visit. Click on individual images to make them larger.





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