Now that the kids are back to school (and my legal obligation cool aunty is on a career break), the time is opportune to share my suggestions with other parents searching for options that both educate and entertain their little one. Sans ipad screen. Fun Fact: It does exist!
Let me set the scene: it’s the school holidays, I am the fun aunt (self-appointed, but the boys haven’t disputed it), and I have agreed – enthusiastically, and without properly reading the itinerary – to take my nephews Leo, 7, and Luca, 3, on a Sydney staycation. Two kids, one hotel room, and an exhibition literally called Bloodsuckers: Nature’s Vampires. What could possibly go wrong?
We checked into Pullman Sydney Hyde Park, which has cleverly bundled an overnight city stay with tickets to the exhibition at the Australian Museum, plus a buffet breakfast and a kids’ activity pack – genuinely the school holiday hack I didn’t know I needed, given it meant approximately zero logistical planning on my part, which is my favourite kind of planning. I’ll save the full verdict on the hotel itself for another day (spoiler: the beds are excellent, the location is unbeatable, and Luca discovered the joys of hotel room service menus, which is a financially dangerous discovery for any three-year-old to make). But the real story of this weekend was what happened once we walked into the museum.
Because nothing quite prepares you for taking a three-year-old to an exhibition about creatures that drink blood for a living.
Bloodsuckers: Nature’s Vampires is the Australian Museum’s latest blockbuster, on loan from the Royal Ontario Museum, and it does not mess around. Over 100 objects, specimens, larger-than-life models and digital interactives, all dedicated to the planet’s most committed micro-predators – vampire bats, black flies, oxpeckers, leeches, and a catfish called the candiru that I will not be Googling further out of self-preservation. Leo, being seven and therefore constitutionally obsessed with anything gross, was fully feral with excitement within about thirty seconds. Luca, being three, mostly just wanted to know if the bats were “real” and then, upon confirmation that they were (taxidermied, but real), needed a solid 10 minutes to process that information while holding my hand extremely tightly.
To their credit, the museum has clearly thought about kids like mine. The exhibition doesn’t just lean on the horror-movie theatrics (although there’s plenty of moody lighting and dramatic reveal moments that had Leo doing his best vampire impression through most of it) – it actually explains the biology of blood-feeding, the evolutionary reasons these creatures do what they do, and why most of them are far more interested in avoiding us than terrorising us. Leo, who has strong opinions about most things, declared the vampire bats “actually kind of cute, don’t tell anyone I said that,” which I consider a significant scientific breakthrough for a child who started the day convinced all bats were evil.
The medicinal leech section genuinely fascinated me as the resident adult, because apparently leeches have made a legitimate comeback in modern medicine – not something I expected to learn on a Tuesday with a toddler asleep on my hip. There’s also a section on Australian bloodsucking insects – home turf material, if you will – which felt like a nice reminder that you don’t need to travel far to find something happy to feed on you, a fact I have personally confirmed at every backyard barbecue I’ve ever attended.
Was there a slightly dicey moment where Luca declared, quite loudly, that he “did not like the drums” (ie the beating heart thumping through the room) in the middle of a very quiet exhibit? Yes. Did an elderly couple nearby find this more entertaining than the actual exhibit? Also yes. Did I consider this a net win for the day regardless? Absolutely.
By the time we wandered back out into daylight – and back to the hotel for what I can only describe as an extremely well-earned room service dinner – both boys had somehow retained an alarming amount of vampire bat trivia, Luca had adopted “leeches are actually helpful, Aunt” as his new personality, and I had successfully pulled off a school holiday activity that didn’t involve a single trampoline park. Genuinely, for a topic that sounds like it should be reserved for teenagers and horror fans, Bloodsuckers manages to hit that rare sweet spot of being properly educational, mildly spooky, and completely kid-appropriate
Would I do it again? Ask me after the hotel review. But the exhibition itself? A hard yes, blood-drinking catfish and all.
Bloodsuckers: Nature’s Vampires, Australian Museum, package via Pullman Sydney Hyde Park, from $399/night, bookable until 11 October 2026.
