A museum proposed for the remote Queensland town of Charleville, 683 kilometres west of Brisbane, will celebrate the diversity of the Australian outback and “unveil some of its mysteries.”
The Outback Museum of Australia, a project of the Murweh Shire Council and Griffith University, will be built in the town’s existing Top Secret Tourism Precinct, based around the relics of a clandestine bush air base where almost 4,000 US troops were based during World War II.
Murweh Shire Council has received a $7.94 million grant for the development of the precinct, including the delivery of the new museum.
The masterplan for the precinct and the concept design for the Outback Museum of Australia have been developed by French-registered architect and Griffith University professor Karine Dupre, together with architecture students Majed Abuseif, Ting Ren, Miyuki Suzuki and Sebastian Smith.
Masterplan for the Top Secret Tourism Precinct by Majed Abuseif and Karine Dupre from Griffith University.
Image: Majed Abuseif and Karine Dupre
“This museum will showcase the true contemporary spirit of the outback’s natural environments and the people who inhabit them today,” said Dupre. “It will be a new type of museum, combining technology, facts and art to create an immersive and multi-sensory experience for visitors through installations that draw from the outback culture.
“We are all delighted to see such a great outcome for a co-creative project with the local community and can’t wait to see the design unfold into construction drawings.”
Around 70,000 visitors pass through Charleville each year, with the town acting as a gateway to the outback proper. The Bidjara people are the traditional owners of much of the land around the town.
