Immigration Museum, Melbourne: Entry price, opening hours & history

The best museum in Melbourne is arguably the Immigration Museum on Flinders Street. That’s at least partly because it tells the story of how modern Australia came to be.

If you want cultural enrichment in Melbourne, there’s no shortage of options. The Victorian capital has a wealth of museums, most of which have aspects that make them worth a visit. The Melbourne Museum is the big boy, covering a wide variety of topics, and most of them well. Meanwhile, there’s a cluster around Federation Square. The Australian Centre for the Moving Image is the most engaging of these.

But the best history museum in Melbourne – certainly in terms of how long it stays in the memory afterwards – is the Immigration Museum.

Immigration Museum in Melbourne

Inside the Melbourne Free Tram Zone, the Immigration Museum is in the former Customs House. The old pieces of luggage on display, ranging from a case belonging to an Irishman who came over in 1887 to a Croat who arrived in 2002, symbolise Australia’s immigration history.

The presentation at the Immigration Museum is superb. Video screens, mocked-up transport ships and cleverly displayed timelines all combine for a thoroughly absorbing experience that saps the time away. You go in for a quick look round and emerge three hours later wanting more.

Immigrant language tests at the Immigration Museum

The tales of racism are often shocking, particularly when it comes to the dictation test that was finally abolished in 1958. Would-be immigrants were required to pass a language test in any European language. But it wasn’t necessarily the language that the immigrant spoke. One Maltese applicant was tested in Dutch. A multilingual political activist was kept out after being tested in Gaelic.

The key to the museum is that it tells scores of individual stories. The immigration over two centuries has not been a single wave, but millions of separate, distinct strands.

This is something that’s important, as it goes some way to explaining Melbourne’s character. The city can be a slippery fish to grasp – it doesn’t have one overriding selling point, but thousands of smaller points of appeal that weave together sometimes by design and sometimes by accident. It’s a highly multicultural city, as you’ll see from looking at a few restaurant menus, and there is plenty of space for people to try their own thing and see if it works.

Immigration Museum entry fee and opening hours

The Immigration Museum is on Flinders Street in Melbourne CBD. Book tickets on the museum website. Entry costs $15, and the opening hours are 10am to 5pm daily.

Melbourne hotels with a pool include the Intercontinental Rialto, the child-friendly Novotel Melbourne on Collins and the apartment-style Mantra on Russell.

More attractions in Melbourne CBD

The shops of the Block Arcade.

The historic buildings of Collins Street.

The street art of the laneways.

Cooks Cottage in Fitzroy Gardens.

Pastuso, Melbourne’s best Peruvian restaurant.