If you're after a family day out that doubles as a bit of learning, the Hunter Science Festival lands at the Newcastle Museum on Sunday 23 August, from 10am to 3pm. It's free to get in, which is the best part, and it's put on by the museum alongside the Hunter Innovation and Science Hub and the Hunter Medical and Research Institute. The whole thing sits inside National Science Week, which runs from 15 to 23 August under the theme 'Seeds of science: Nurturing knowledge for all'.
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The robot arena is the obvious place to start. You can have a go at controlling your own combat robot with FabLab and Hunter Combat Robotics, and there's a humanoid robot from NUBots and a robot dog from Fizzics Education to meet. Over on the stage, the shows run roughly every half hour: The Bubble Laboratory, the HMRI Poo Palace presentation and the Fizzics Education science show rotate through the morning and early afternoon, with The Pretty Amazing Jono's Magic Mad Science filling in at 2pm.
What makes the day work is how much you can actually do rather than just watch. You can climb inside a City of Newcastle garbage truck and chat with the driver, build and race your own mini solar car with CareerLinks and HISH, hold a real shark egg with Irukandji Shark and Ray Encounters, plant some native seeds from the City of Newcastle's Environmental Biodiversity Team, and even use a real radio telescope with Future You. There's a boat-building station with AiSTEM, a new science-education game called Charge Track Legends from Net:Zed, and the HMRI Poo Palace, where you get to be a poo inside the exhibit. The Poo Palace is a bit of a draw on its own, and it comes with a jumping castle that tends to be popular.
Beyond the activities, there are more than thirty stalls to wander around, with the likes of the Newcastle Astronomical Society, the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens, Newcastle Libraries, the Australian Native Bee Association, the Geological Society of Australia, the Hunter Valley Amateur Beekeepers Association and the Hunter Water team among them. It's a good mix of local groups and bigger names, so there's something for everyone to stop at.
On the practical side, the Poo Palace runs from 10:30am to 3pm on the Sunday, with sessions lasting 15 minutes each — ten minutes jumping and five to get your shoes back on and head out. Tickets for it are free, and they're released in blocks throughout the day, so it's worth planning when you want to tackle it. For lunch, the easiest option is to pack your own and picnic on the lawn, though there's a sausage sizzle from the Rotary Club of Newcastle Enterprise and some poo cupcakes from KT Bakes Cakes if you'd rather not bring anything.
If you're coming from out of town, the museum is at 6 Workshop Way in Newcastle, and it's a free day, so there's no need to book ahead. It's the kind of event that rewards arriving early and letting the kids wander between the arena, the stage and the stalls at their own pace, so a late-morning start gives you the best chance of fitting in a show and a turn at the robot controls before the afternoon wind-down.
Published Date
16 August 2026
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