What’s on for kids these winter school holidays

School’s out and there is plenty to do. No matter where you live, it’s time to get out and explore the world around you. Here are some of the cool things happening around Australian states and territories these winter holidays.

NSW

Cockatoo Island Adventure Photography Workshop

Ferry out from Sydney Harbour to the spectacular shipyards of Cockatoo Island and build skills in using digital SLR cameras for a photography workshop run by the National Maritime Museum.

Bookings are essential.

Location: Cockatoo Island (National Maritime Museum), Sydney

Dates: 14 +15 July

Times: 10am – 4:30pm

Ages: 8-14

Price: $100 / $90 (members + early bird)

Underwater Drone Challenge

Explore below the surface of the harbour with underwater drones. Sessions include a private workshop with ocean-science educators and access to amazing underwater footage highlights to keep and share.

Bookings are recommended.

Location: National Maritime Museum, Sydney

Dates: Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, 10-20 July

Times: 12pm, 12:45pm, 1:30pm, 2:15pm, 3pm

Ages: 8+

Price: $35 general/ $25 members

Young Archie 2025

Don’t forget to check out the finalists of the Young Archie competition, exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until August 17 in a free display alongside the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes. The honourable mentions are displayed at the SH Ervin Gallery alongside the Salon des Refusés.

Location: Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

Dates: Until August 17

Happy Birthday 2U2 – Hikoko Ito

While you are at the gallery, check out Hong Kong-based Japanese artist and architect Hikoko Ito’s installation “Happy Birthday 2U2” – an interactive artwork made up of 366 mailboxes – one for every birthday of the year, including leap years. Visitors can find the mailbox of their birthday and find a birthday card made by a “birthday twin” they have never met. They can then return the favour and leave a handmade birthday card to the next visitor inside.

Dates: 15 March – 17 August 2025

Ages: all ages

Location: Naala Nura building (Lower level 2), Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

Price: Free

VICTORIA

Introduction to the Art of 3D Printing

Explore how 3D printers work, design your own objects using Tinkercad and bring them to life by printing and painting them in this one day workshop. Book online.

Location: National Communication Museum, Hawthorn

Dates: 10 & 16 July

Time: 10am – 4pm

Ages: 10–16

Price: $80

Video Game Design & Ideation

Interested in creating your own video games? Discover what it takes to be a game designer. Explore game genres, build a game pitch in a team and get hands-on with Unity. This is not a coding workshop. Laptops provided.

Location: National Communication Museum, Hawthorn

Date: 17 July

Time: 10am – 4pm

Ages: 14–18

Price: $100

Plans for the Planet: Olaf Breuning for Kids

This playful and interactive exhibition by Swiss artist Olaf Breuning engages kids on issues like conservation, pollution and wildlife, with fun activities like swipe cards that turn on animations as kids explore spaces, a giant tree installation that kids can draw underneath to create homes for forest animals and a touch screen installation where kids can write out their hopeful plans for the planet – all while exploring the exhibition.

Location: NGV International, Ground level, Melbourne

Date: Until October 5

Ages: all ages

Price: free

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

The Studio: Way Too Wild

Create a Dangerously Modern montage inspired by South Australian artist Sue Kneebone. Collage images of people, animals and plants on a postcard. Imagine someone has found your postcard 200 years from now. What does your message say about a social or environmental issue you hope is resolved in the future?

Location: AGSA, Adelaide

Date: Open daily throughout the school holidays (closes 7 September)

Time: 10am-5pm

Price: Free, all materials provided

Ages: All ages

moonGARDEN by Lucion

Don’t forget to check out the gardens at SA Museum after dark these holidays.

A luminous installation by Montreal-based Lucion, will feature 19 towering glowing spheres, each hiding enchanting surprises as part of Illuminate Adelaide’s City Lights.

Location: SA Museum gardens, Adelaide

Date: July 4-20

Time: 5.30pm-10.30pm nightly (until 11pm each Fri and Sat)

Price: free

TASMANIA

Why not check out the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart these school holidays? It has plenty of quirky things to see. For example, the camouflage-painted Mona ferries have sheep and tigers to sit on.

Children can bounce on Chen Zhen’s trampoline work Danser la musique, 2000-0, causing bells to ring, while Girls Rule, a giant bronze sculpture by American artist Tom Otterness, is also a children’s playground, with two long-legged slides.

Another artwork, Cloaca Professional, by Wim Delvoye, is a machine that’s fed at 11am and 4pm and poops at 2pm.

The museum is free for children 11 and under, and for Tasmanians of all ages. Children from out of state ages 12-17 pay a concession price of $17.

QUEENSLAND

Why not pay a visit to Wonderstruck at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane these school holidays? Wonderstruck is a free exhibition that reveals how wonder can be found in many things, and features more than 100 artworks by international and Australian artists.

Look out for Parekowhai’s gravity-defying sculpture of a seal balancing a baby grand

piano on its nose, The Horn of Africa, and Piccinini’s The Observer, which shows a child

balancing impossibly on a tall stack of chairs.

Location: GOMA, Brisbane

Date: Until October 6

Ages: All ages

Price: Free

NORTHERN TERRITORY

Junior Croc Keeper program

For those who want to get up close and personal with these amazing apex animals during the school holidays, Darwin’s Crocodylus Park is running school holiday programs for ages 6-10 and 11-14. For the really brave kids, its Junior Croc Keeper program for 11-14 year olds offers hands-on experience on how to care for crocodiles, including what keepers do to prepare for tours.

Location: Crocodylus Park, Darwin

Date: Mondays and Wednesdays during holidays

Time: 11am – 1pm

Price: $65

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Terracotta Warriors exhibition

Step into the extraordinary world of China’s first emperor Qin Shihuang, to explore his life, legacy, and afterlife by seeing 225 ancient Chinese artefacts, including an army of terracotta warriors unearthed in the ancient tombs of Shaanxi Province.

Location: WA Museum Boola Bardip

Perth Cultural Centre, Perth / Boorloo

Dates: until Feb 22, 2026

Price: Contact the museum for details

ACT

You can’t go past the National Science and Technology Centre – better known as Questacon -for some school holiday fun in the capital this winter – especially if the weather outside is cold and miserable. Check out Free Fall, an exhibit where you hang from a bar then let go and fall smoothly down a two storey vertical slide. There’s also the Awesome Earth exhibit where you can safely experience a lightning strike and use a Wimshurst machine to create the crackle of static electricity. Bookings suggested.

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