But, just like businesses everywhere, Questacon's problems escalated in March due to COVID-19, leading to an indefinite closure of the centre after more than three uninterrupted decades since opening in November 1988.
In good news for Mr Hoffmeister and the educational tourism sector, many of Canberra's national cultural institutions plan to reopen "over the days and weeks ahead". "Some things will operate a little differently as we follow public health guidelines and we thank you for working with us on this. "We challenged some of our staff to have a go at how you could do a similar experiment using just at-home materials or tools or different components.
Mr Hoffmeister said, for now, centre managers were hard at work developing tours of the science centre's more than 200 interactive exhibitions with a necessarily "hands-off experience".