My holiday recount

On the holidays my family and I travelled to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. It is a truly stunning part of Australia. I highly recommend visiting if you haven't already!

We are a very ‘outdoorsy’ family, so every day we were either at the beach catching waves, or on extended scenic walks.

One rainy day we decided to drive down to Bribie Island. We had lunch at the Surf Club, and as we were leaving I noticed a free tourism magazine for the region. I picked up the magazine and was reading it in the car as we returned to our holiday rental.

Much to my delight, I came across an article titled “Learn and have fun at new Mathema Gallery” (see below).

Well… as you can imagine… it was like ALL my Christmases had come at once!

I was SO excited, I read the article to the kids and my husband (I ignored a few teenage eye rolls) and without hesitation my very supportive husband said “how far is it from here? You have to go there…you will love it!”.

It had already been a long day, so we decided to make plans to go another day later in the week.

I waited excitedly and finally the day arrived! 

It was about a 75 minute drive on very narrow, winding roads. I think my children thought I had gone mad… there was lots of “mum do you and dad know where we are?” and “mum I think we are lost” and “mum, how could a gallery be this far out of town?”.

The Mathema Gallery is located in a very beautiful area one hour north west of Brisbane called Ocean View. I had no idea what to expect or what we would find at the gallery… but as soon as we pulled into the driveway I was impressed (and so were the children, because I heard someone genuinely say “Wow! This place looks cool mum!”🙌🏻 )

The Mathema Gallery shares the property with a winery (which we visited after the gallery for a delicious lunch). (This is sounding like a travel blog…lol). 

The Mathema (which comes from the Greek word meaning knowledge or learning) Gallery is a huge, beautiful modern, bright building that immediately made me feel like I had found my “happy place”! 

Mathema is the result of the hard work, determination, perseverance and vision of Cal and Rosemary Irons. I was familiar with Cal and Rosemary’s work through their company Origo Education which produces many wonderful resources I have used over the years (I still refer to my Think Tank problems!) however we had never met.

On the day we arrived Cal was generously sharing his knowledge with everyone who came through the doors.

As soon as I walked into the Gallery I was in absolute awe of the beauty, care, love and attention to detail shown in the design and creation. 

The gallery is truly a ‘passion project’ for Cal and Rosemary. Entry is completely free, and Cal and Rosemary have funded the building of the gallery entirely themselves.

What an amazing contribution to Maths Education in Australia!

My children headed off in four different directions to explore Mathema and they were all engaged for our whole visit (about 1.5 hours). There were games to play, puzzles to try, interactive displays and lots of really beautiful artefacts to view.

My 5 year old son was mesmerised by the Galton Board and my 7 year old daughter loved writing her name using Braille. My 12 year old loved the ‘Guess my number’ problem which encouraged her to explore the binary number system and the 15 year old stood for a good ten minutes working through the ‘Tower of Hanoi’ problem. My husband even told me he found it fascinating reading about how ancient civilizations like the Egyptians recorded time! #winning 

The Mathema Gallery is the first dedicated maths Gallery or Museum in Australia (In the US, the National Museum of Mathematics in New York is on my bucket list to visit!). 

Mathema has exhibits that present the fascinating history of ancient civilizations like the Greeks, Egyptians and Chinese and their amazing mathematical discoveries.  I was obviously so excited to see the exhibit looking at the history of place value, but there was so much more. We learnt about measurement, geometry, the development of the abacus, the calculator and other amazing maths facts.

The information on each exhibit was written in simple, child-friendly language that even my 7 year-old could understand.

If you are in the area, I HIGHLY recommend you pop in and if your school is local- it would be such a wonderful location for an excursion, particularly for Year ⅚ students.

While you are there, I also highly recommend buying Cal and Rosemary’s book “The amazing beginnings of Mathematics” which I purchased at the Gallery gift shop alongside some new board games (some people can’t stop buying shoes, for me it is board games!).

Having the book has allowed me (and the children) to read about some of the exhibits in more detail.  The book is beautifully published and again so easy to read! I was very excited to have Cal sign the book for me, and he was gracious enough to pose for a photo (see below)! 

Overall, we had such a wonderful time at Mathema, and I am so glad I decided to pick up that tourism magazine!

On behalf of everyone in the Maths Education community in Australia, I would like to congratulate and thank Cal and Rosemary for creating the Mathema Gallery!  

Finally, in the spirit of the Mathema Gallery, this week I encourage you to share an amazing piece of mathematical history with your students- it might be the Egyptian or Maya number system, whatever it is, I guarantee they will find it interesting! 

You can find out more about Mathema by visiting their website.

#not a sponsored blog post, just a raving fan!