undreds of teeth — rows of them! — glisten as 11 brawny bodies in various shades of blue-grey twist and flex with predatory agility. No, I’m not cage-diving in the sublime waters of the world’s second most shark-infested country — although I now want to! — but inspecting the life-sized models at Sharks, a blockbuster exhibit in Sydney’s Australian Museum, on display into 2023. The oldest museum in Oz, established in 1827 and home to 21 million cultural and scientific objects, is an authoritative introduction to the land Down Under, treating both its oceanic and land-dwelling emblems with great respect. Before my trip, ’s travel editor may have hammed up the fearsome reputation of this continent’s creatures — gaslighting this writer into thinking a bite of some sort was imminent — but the museum display assures me that, on average, you can count the people killed by snakes, crocodiles and sharks
