Museum Victoria: 5 books

Phar Lap is one of Australia’s best-loved icons. The story of the gangly foal who became one of the greatest racehorses ever has captured Australians’ hearts for generations. Phar Lap: A True Legend, written by museum curator Michael Reason, has delighted and informed readers for the last five years....

Erected at Melbourne Observatory in 1869, the telescope was the second largest in the world, designed to explore the nature of the nebulae in the southern skies. Richard Gillespie, head of the History and Technology department at the Melbourne museum has written an entertaining account of the telescope’s...

Nudibranchs, the ‘butterflies of the sea’, belong to a group that includes bubble shells, sea hares, side-gilled slugs, sap-sucking slugs and sea butterflies (pteropods). This group includes some of the most beautiful, colourful and delicate of all marine creatures. More than 400 species of nudibranchs...

When Edith met a cheeky young lyrebird on her garden path, she could not guess that he would one day be known as ‘A Miracle of the Dandenongs’. Soon, James the lyrebird was singing and dancing for Edith, mimicking the birdsongs and other sounds that echoed through the bush. Word of their friendship...

We might think of sponges as bathroom objects but the real living animals are far more interesting. They come in all shapes and sizes, occur in all oceans of the world, and have amazing lives. Sponges have lived in our oceans for 600 million years. Ancient forms even built reefs bigger than the Great...