SCIENCEWORKS general manager Genevieve Fahey is retiring and heading to Queensland after 26 years with Museum Victoria, 21 of those at Spotswood.
‘‘I’m moving to Queensland to be with my husband. He moved up there in July,’’ she said.
‘‘He’s been commuting back and forward each weekend . . . I’ve been planning for when I might leave and that seemed like a really good reason to do something different and go and live somewhere different for a while, so I’m looking forward to that.’’
Ms Fahey plans to ‘‘have a really good break’’ and will study communication for social change at Queensland University.
In 1988, she was part of a project team that developed plans for a new science and technology museum at Victoria’s heritage-listed pumping station in Booker Street, Spotswood.
The 56-year-old mother of three adult children managed one of the first exhibitions at Scienceworks in 1992 and became manager in 2003.
The biggest international exhibitions were Star Trek, Wallace and Gromit and Star Wars, the last of which broke the annual attendance record at Scienceworks when more than 500,000 visited in 2009.
Another memorable exhibition, in 1998, involved spiders, after approval was received from the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service. Ms Fahey said she was proud that Scienceworks was the most visited tourist attraction in the west.
‘‘I don’t think anybody, when we started off, ever thought that would happen given where we are and people think, oh, you’re joking, when in actual fact I think if you build something really good people will come.’’
The Scienceworks was last year inducted into the Victorian Tourism Hall of Fame. Ms Fahey finishes at the end of this month.
