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Driving south away from Seventeen Seventy we arrived into Australia’s Turtle hatching capital, Bundaberg. While Bundy is more famously known for its unforgivingly harsh pirate juices, it has the largest nesting of marine turtles on Australia’s East Coast. The name Bundaberg derived from the term ‘Bunda’ which is a moiety name that denotes an important man, used by the local Taribelang people of the Kabi nation. The suffix ‘berg’ is an old English word to describe an old town. Bundaberg was founded in 1867 as an agricultural and port town, it thrives in growing, refining and exporting sugar. Around the sugar industry, the town does well with its Rum exports and commercial fruit and vegetable growing.
An outing with Shovel's Niece provided us with a great opportunity to visit the Riversleigh Fossil Centre in Mount Isa. This museum and subsequent display of fossils from the Riversleigh World Heritage area provides visitors with an insight into the type of fossils collected and discovered at Riversleigh. We had a fabulous few hours being shown around the display and laboratory by Alan an old mining colleague of Shove's Dad and a dedicated volunteer of thirty-three years, who has worked and continues to work tirelessly in the laboratory searching for fossil fragments and hosting daily tours.
As part of a guided tour you get the opportunity to visit the Laboratory where eager volunteers unwrap entombed specimen and scrape dirt from bones millions of years old. One bone in particular had been worked on for two years already when we saw it and was certainly no where near being completed. Great work if you have the patience. Fascinating all the same.  Visitors are also treated to a tour of a temperature controlled dinosaur fossil display exhibiting bones that are said to be over 90 million years old and are bloody huge!!! During this era the land was lush with thick green forests and running springs, since then the earth has slowly dried and eroded, exposing what are now referred to as ‘Jump-Ups’ The dinosaurs on display are the “Australovenator wintonensis, nicknamed “Banjo”, as well as Australia’s most complete sauropod Diamantinasaurus matildae, nicknamed “Matilda” and Savannasaurus elliottorum “Wade”.“ Researchers believe many sauropods met an untimely demise getting stuck in mud and due to their size where unable to free themselves leading to starvation.
The tour continues with a 2km buggy journey over the top of the ‘Jump-Up’ to marvel at spectacular views of the area and admire impressionist sculptures of dinosaurs in scenes depicting how it might have been all those millions of years ago.   Riversleigh otherwise known as Fossil Exploration ’D’ site of this World Heritage Area is located approx. 250kms North West of Mount Isa in Outback Queensland. Riversleigh contains fossils from 33.9 to 23 million years ago and species such as Barawertornis Tedfordi a cassowary sized flightless bird, Mekosuchus Sanderi a tree-climbing crocodile and Thylacinus Diksoni commonly known as the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger have been discovered in this region that was once a lush rainforest. The ancient animal bones remain so well preserved due to the lime sediment deposits found within the water and subsequent mud. The animal or plant is encased in the mud and fossilised making Riversleigh a very important and rare site for Paleontological research. David Attenborough has even visited the site calling it one of the four most important fossil deposits in the world.
Home to the discovery of the Kronosaurus fossil and many other prehistoric marine creatures. We thought we would do the usual Richmond thing and get a photo with the Kronosaurus.
This is a small town that rests on the banks of the Finders river and is one of three towns that form part of the "Dinosaur Trail". Hughenden boasts the discovery of the Muttaburrasaurus dinosaur, which was discovered in the town Muttaburra, 200 kilometres south of Hughenden and shows a great replica display of the skeleton in the dinosaur museum. We ate at the FJ Holden Cafe, which displays loads of holden memorabilia and massive burgers that won’t disappoint!
We named the parrots Hansel and Gretel because they only wanted to eat our sultanas and not the seeds we were trying to feed them. They were actually taking the dried fruit out of our hands, great experience and a lovely start to the morning |
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November 2023
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