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Welcome to the Museum of Childhood, Perth; a place that seeks to recreate that delightful childhood garden where the colors are brighter and happier, the mornings are more fragrant and the air mellower. Unique amongst all the museums in Perth and one of the top Perth tourist attractions, the Museum of Childhood is a preserve of the Australian childhood heritage in all its myriad motifs. About The Museum of Childhood The Museum of Childhood with its 10,000-odd exhibits is a walk through the social history of Australia, and especially how the children of Australia from diverse milieus and diverse eras, have grown up over the ages. Delve into their experience of growing up through their toys, clothes, study materials and various objects of daily use that are displayed here. The Museum of Childhood, Australia started as a private collection by John and Mary McKenzie, later on made public in 1975. The whole collection was passed on to the Western Australian College of Advanced Education (rechristened Edith Cowan University) in 1982, and since then the Museum of Childhood has been functioning under the aegis of the University. Some of the most popular exhibits at the Perth Museum of Childhood include the cute playthings of Emma Purkis (a resident of the Swan River Colony in the 1830s) that are believed to be the earliest of European-made toys in Western Australia, the 150-odd toys belonging to the Riley children, protégé of Perth's very first Anglican Archbishop and childhood memoirs that date back to the working class "baby boom" period of the late 1940s. These are not just beautiful toys and quaint playthings. The collection at the Museum of Childhood, unique even amongst the Australia museums, is a rare glimpse into the days of wooden toy horses, golliwogs and dolls' houses and a lesson for the parents of today as to what a happy childhood should be made up of. Walk down the corridors of the Museum of Childhood; you might hear squeals of laughter and the scampering of tiny feet.
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