Image: Rodney Fox & Mark Tozer Museum & Research Centre
Rodney Fox & Mark Tozer Museum & Research Centre, is home to plenty of priceless shark artifacts and some of them you may just expect to find in the Hollywood capital, Los Angeles.
The Museum & Research Centre brings together the collections of legendary shark attack survivor and conservationist Rodney Fox and technical diver and collector Mark Tozer.
It was back in 2019 when founder Mark Tozer starting working on the museum “to inspire people to love the ocean.”
Among the curious collection is a weathered wooden cello that the museum says once belonged to Jaws author Peter Benchley.
According to the Mark, the instrument was played underwater among live sharks as part of a promotional stunt, with the famous Jaws theme echoing beneath the surface.
Time underwater left the instrument permanently broken, giving it the unique appearance visitors see today.
The collection also includes another one of the most recognisable pieces of Jaws history with the original shark cage used to film the movie’s live great white shark sequences at Dangerous Reef near South Australia’s Neptune Islands.
Legendary underwater filmmakers Ron and Valerie Taylor captured the sequences alongside Rodney Fox, using real great white sharks in open-ocean conditions rather than relying solely on Hollywood effects.
Diver and stuntman Carl Rizzo entered the cage as the sharks circled nearby, helping create some of the film’s most memorable and realistic underwater footage.
The production travelled to South Australia because Dangerous Reef was already renowned for reliable great white shark encounters, giving the state a surprising connection to one of cinema’s most famous films.
“It’s a small cage that had a smaller guy inside it to make the shark look bigger,” Mark said.
“It’s basically a half-sized cage… it was used in the first Jaws film and made the final cut, so you can actually see it in the movie.”
The museum allows visitors to explore much more than shark memorabilia, with vintage diving equipment, technical diving displays, shipwreck artefacts, marine conservation exhibits and unusual ocean curiosities filling the space.
“It’s a bit like my man cave in there,” Mark said. “It’s full of weird, wonderful and wacky ocean stuff.”
“It covers everything from historical diving and technical diving to cave diving, shipwrecks and sharks.
“There’s something for everybody, really.”
For anyone looking for an unusual way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon, learn more about the depths of the ocean or see a piece of movie history, the Rodney Fox & Mark Tozer Museum & Research Centre is well worth exploring.
Rodney Fox & Mark Tozer Museum and Research Centre
Where: 107 Henley Beach Rd, Mile End
For more info, click here.
