Shot Tower Museum

Unclaimed

What a cute little museum definitely recommend visiting. The only slight negative is that you have to go through a shop to get to it. It does feel slightly awkward, but the staff are used to it so don’t worry about it. It’s a very small museum, but it’s definitely worth going to see if you have any interest in history at all . I absolutely love that they have preserved this inside a shopping centre. It’s completely free to wander into .

Small but worth a visit as it’s right inside the RM Williams store. Then you can go outside and see it for real. Here’s my description for the shot tower itself: An icon within Melbourne Central that has a fascinating history. While the tower has stood the test of time, the buildings around it have evolved several times over the years. On the day I went, duo artists, Craig &Karl had a colourful art installation that hung down from the roof of the dome, dangling around the shot tower itself. The Shot Tower was a bullet making facility designed in 1889. It was the tallest building in Melbourne's CBD until the mid-1940s, and has become one of the city's most enduring landmarks and is a significant building in Australia's industrial history. On a shot-making day, the shot maker would load the pig iron (in the form of lead bars) into a bucket on the second floor. He'd then take the 300-odd stairs to the top of the tower, where he would use a pulley to haul the lead to the top. There, he'd fire up a gas ring vat and melt the lead, which boils at a reasonably low 118 degrees Celsius. Then he would ladle the molten lead into a colander and the lead would fall 132 feet into a vat of water on the second floor. By the time it hit the water, the molten lead would have cooled into spheres of lead shot, which were then shovelled into rolling machine dryers (each punched with holes for auto-sizing) on its way to being packed into bags, ready for despatch and use in shotguns, on scales, in pin ball machines and puzzle games-and even as ships' ballast. Some 25 million individual shot pellets could be produced every hour, but the Coop family didn't just make shot here. There is also a museum, enter via the R.M. Williams store and follow the signs.

Tucked inside Melbourne Central like a secret time capsule - because nothing says Melbourne like a 19th-century tower chilling under a giant glass cone! Snapped the shot while trying not to fall over staring straight up... definitely looked like a total tourist. Make sure you head into the museum and learn the history! Worth it!

Very cool. The museum is inside the leather goods store (beautiful in its own right). It is small but it covers the very curious production of lead shots that necessitated a high tower used to pour the molten lead in free fall. It is free, wish it was larger and that you could climb up the tower!

The shot tower museum is worth a 20 minutes detour in your day. The entrance is inside a clothing retail store so walk right inside. The first part of the museum is a history of how Melbourne Central shopping centre came to be built around and over the shot tower and the latter part is about the shot tower and its workings in its hey day. There are exhibits and photos of its interior and workings. Yes it's a free museum.