Think you’ve seen it all when it comes to art galleries? Roughly 70 kilometres off the coast of Townsville in the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef is a museum that’s unlike anything in the Southern Hemisphere. Here, artworks don’t hang on walls but stand deep on the ocean floor, serving as both stunning sculptures and artificial reefs.
Officially opened in 2020, the Museum of Underwater Art (MOUA) is a large-scale sculpture trail that’s the largest and oldest of its kind in Australia. With only 5,000 visitors each year, MOUA is undoubtedly one of the country's best-kept secrets and is completely free to explore – as long as you don’t mind getting a bit wet.
Renowned eco-sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor was tasked with creating the first installation, 'The Coral Greenhouse', which rests 16 metres below the surface in John Brewer Reef. This impressive 165-tonne structure, featuring 17 hyper-realistic human sculptures, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest underwater art structure on Earth – just another claim to add to the Great Barrier Reef’s trophy shelf.
In 2021, MOUA introduced 'Ocean Siren', a striking, four-metre-high sculpture modelled on a young Indigenous girl from the Wulgurukaba tribe. Rising above the water, the sculpture changes colour in response to rising sea temperatures, serving as a real-time warning of the climate change challenges faced by the Great Barrier Reef.
MOUA’s latest exhibit, 'Ocean Sentinels', was unveiled in 2023 and is located just a short swim from 'The Coral Greenhouse' in John Brewer Reef. Divers can explore the full length of this mystical underwater sculpture trail, while snorkelers can marvel at deCaires Taylor’s newest series of eight hybrid human-marine sculptures, which sit in shallow waters at a depth of five metres.
The coolest part of the MOUA is that all its sculptures have been designed to naturally accumulate marine life and corals, meaning they're ever-fascinating for swimmers to observe over time. What's more, the reef’s true ‘ocean sentinels’ – First Nations people from the Nyawaygi, Gugu-Badhun, Bindal, Wulgurukaba and Manbarra groups – play a crucial role in preserving and protecting MOUA, with local Indigenous community members engaged as dive guides for this underwater treasure.
So if you’re in your mermaid era, be sure to add the Museum of Underwater Art to your great Aussie bucket list.
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