Exploring the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania

David Walsh built his museum underground. Not metaphorically: the galleries at MONA are literally carved three storeys into a sandstone peninsula jutting into the Derwent River, and at the deepest level you stand beside a 240-million-year-old cliff face that forms one raw, unplastered wall. Walsh, a Hobart-born professional gambler who made his fortune through mathematical betting systems, calls the place a “subversive adult Disneyland.” That description undersells the strangeness and oversells the fun-park quality. MONA is genuinely unlike anything else in the Southern Hemisphere.

Getting There: The Ferry First

The standard way to arrive is aboard one of MONA’s own high-speed catamarans from Brooke Street Pier in central Hobart. The crossing takes around 30 minutes along the Derwent and costs approximately AUD $30 return (separate from museum entry). This is not just a ferry; it is part of the experience. The boats carry a bar, local Tasmanian wines, and a level of theatrical self-awareness that sets the mood before you even disembark.

For those who want to upgrade, the Posh Pit is the ferry’s private lounge and deck, offering complimentary canapés and drinks during the crossing. It books out fast and is worth grabbing for an early crossing, when the river light is still soft.

Driving or cycling is an option (the museum is about 12 kilometres north of the city), but arriving by water and emerging on the peninsula’s dock is the intended sequence.

Tickets, Hours and a Critical Warning

Adult entry costs AUD $39 for non-Tasmanians (concessions AUD $33, ages 12-17 AUD $17, under 12 free). Tasmanian residents pay AUD $5. Book online in advance through MONA’s website; timed entry slots fill up, especially on weekends and during January’s MONA FOMA festival.

MONA is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This is the single most common planning mistake visitors make. The museum opens Thursday through Monday, 10 AM to 5 PM. During January, it opens on Tuesdays as well, to accommodate festival crowds, but Wednesday closures hold all year. If you arrive mid-week expecting to walk in, you will find locked gates and an empty pier.

Allow a minimum of three hours inside. Four is more realistic if you engage with the “O” device, a personal audio guide loaded with Walsh’s own commentary, artist interviews, and an option to rate works as “love” or “hate.” The O is free and replaces conventional wall labels; MONA deliberately avoids the standard didactic placard approach, which forces you to develop an opinion rather than defer to a curator.

The Collection: Sex, Death, and 3,500 Years

Walsh’s collecting spans ancient Egyptian sarcophagi, Roman coins, medieval manuscripts, and contemporary installations, united by themes he has described as sex, death, and the nature of existence. This is not a collection organised by period or geography. You might turn from a Wim Delvoye tattooed pigskin to a Sidney Nolan snake-series canvas to a works by Anselm Kiefer, all within the same gallery loop.

The subterranean architecture by Fender Katsalidis means there are few conventional walls. You navigate by descending spiral staircases, crossing walkways over the natural rock, and doubling back through spaces that feel simultaneously cavernous and intimate. The layout is intentionally disorienting. Walsh wants visitors to get slightly lost.

James Turrell’s light installations appear at various points in the building, including Event Horizon, which is worth seeking out specifically. The Void Bar (yes, there is a bar at the museum’s deepest underground level) serves local wines and Tasmanian spirits beside that ancient sandstone wall. It opens during museum hours and is not a gimmick; it is a genuinely good bar in an extraordinary setting.

MONA is also expanding. Walsh announced plans for a new underground library space to house his rare book collection, which includes a first edition of Nabokov’s Lolita and an early signed copy of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

Eating at MONA

Faro Bar and Restaurant is suspended over the river at the museum’s edge, a glass-and-steel room with views across the Derwent. The menu changes frequently and leans into Tasmanian produce: local oysters, game, foraged herbs. The kitchen experiments; some visits you get a conventional bistro menu, others something closer to a tasting experience. Book a table for lunch to coincide with your museum visit rather than showing up and hoping.

For something more casual, The Source on the lower levels offers lighter fare and, again, good Tasmanian wine. Neither venue is cheap by Hobart standards, but both are reasonably priced compared with comparable restaurants in Sydney or Melbourne.

The “Mona Like a Rockstar” package bundles return Posh Pit ferry tickets, museum entry, a Void Bar cocktail, and a five-course matched wine dinner at Faro. It is priced as a premium splurge and books out weeks in advance, but for a special occasion it is a well-constructed day.

Staying Near MONA

For accommodation within walking distance of the ferry, the MACq 01 Hotel on the Hobart waterfront is the most design-coherent choice. Rooms are themed around Tasmanian historical characters (bushrangers, scientists, early settlers) and the fitout holds up to scrutiny rather than being a shallow aesthetic gesture. It is in the upper-mid price bracket.

The Henry Jones Art Hotel, also on the waterfront in the converted IXL jam factory, is similarly positioned and mixes original industrial architecture with serious contemporary art throughout the building. Both hotels put you five minutes’ walk from Brooke Street Pier and the MONA ferry.

If budget matters more than location, Salamanca and Battery Point have a range of self-contained apartments and guesthouses within 15 minutes on foot of the waterfront.

What Most Guides Miss

Most guides describe MONA as a “controversial” art museum and leave it there. The more useful framing is that it operates on a different logic from public institutions. Walsh funds the entire operation personally and has no obligation to balance accessibility against artistic ambition or to maintain donor relationships. He has said publicly that MONA will close when he dies. This gives the collection a particular intensity, and a finitude, that public museums simply do not have. Visiting now, while Walsh is still actively expanding and acquiring, is a different proposition from visiting in twenty years when it may no longer exist in its current form.

The other practical fact most guides miss: Tasmania’s weather changes fast. The ferry can be cancelled in rough conditions. If your schedule is tight, check the MONA website the morning of your visit and have a backup plan.

Book the ferry crossing for the first departure of the day and you will have the museum largely to yourself for the first 90 minutes. The tour groups and day-trippers tend to cluster on mid-morning boats.