Family fun

The National Dinosaur Museum at Gold Creek has 30-minute guided tours between 11am and 2pm during the school holidays.

From January 13-17 and 20-24, the National Museum of Australia is holding “Young Masters”, where children can create their own collage masterpiece, inspired by the “Old Masters” of bark painting whose work is currently on display at the museum.

The Old Bus Depot Markets has a Christmas focus on the weekend of December 21 and 22, and antiques and collectibles take over on January 12 for the first “Portobello Road” special event of 2014.

All summer long at Questacon there’s “Measure Island”, an adventure through a jungle-themed world with Archy and his dog Cubit, which aims to get kids aged 8-14 thinking about the science of measurement.

Sport

THERE’S always a lot on over summer for sports fans, including plenty of live action in Canberra featuring national and international stars.

On January 16 our champion baseballers the Canberra Cavalry begin a four-day clash with the Perth Heat at Narrabundah Ballpark. The match-up involves four separate games (normal in baseball) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7pm, and on Sunday at 12pm.

In basketball, the Canberra Capitals have three home games early in the New Year. The Caps take on the Adelaide Lightning on January 11 at the AIS Arena, followed by a showdown with the West Coast Waves at Southern Cross Stadium in Tuggeranong on January 18.

January 14 sees the Prime Minister’s XI play the old foe England in a day-night match at Manuka Oval, and our local women’s soccer team Canberra United will be doing all they can to find the net when Adelaide United come to McKellar Park on January 19.

On stage

TWO mega concerts featuring female vocalists both come to town on January 18. Celtic Woman is on at the Royal Theatre, featuring Irish singers Chloë Agnew, Lisa Lambe and Susan McFadden accompanied by violinist Máiréad Nesbitt, and Jessica Mauboy brings her “End of the Earth” tour to the AIS Arena.

If the silly season wasn’t quite silly enough, comedian and best-selling author David Sedaris will be wise cracking live on stage at the Canberra Theatre on January 22, for one night only.

Exhibitions

YOU have until January 27 to check out “Roy Lichtenstein: Pop Remix” at the National Gallery of Australia, and until 16 February to see “25 Treasures from the Parliament House Art Collection” exhibited right where they belong, at Parliament House.

Arc Cinema at the Film and Sound Archive has lined up a highly unusual collection of movies that passed Australia by for the “Blink and You’ll Miss Them” film festival, which runs until February 28.

The National Portrait Gallery’s photographic exhibition “Elvis at 21” ends on March 10 and so does “Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia” at the National Library, which brings together historical charts, atlases, globes and the like from around the world.

The National Gallery of Australia has treasures from the people who lived in Peru before Spanish colonisation on display until April 21 in “Gold and the Incas”, and “I’ve Been Working On The Railway” tells the stories of the Torres Strait Islanders, South Sea Islanders and Aborigines who laid Australia’s train tracks in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s at the National Archives until May 5.

Two exhibitions at the National Museum of Australia offer rare insights into Aboriginal culture until July 20: “On Country: Connect, Work, Celebrate”, which explains how traditional knowledge about land and sea management is blended with modern technology and research, and “Old Masters: Australia’s Great Bark Artists”, which shows off the museum’s large collection of bark paintings, one of the world’s oldest continuing art traditions.