Discover the global epicentre of dinosaur digs
WINTON
“This is not just a museum,” booms George Sinapius, a hyper-energetic fossil expert whose slim build is at odds with his bellowing opening line. “It’s a living heritage and it’s uncovering the secrets of the past.”
We are standing on the edge of the ‘Jump Up’, a flat-topped outcrop of land, some 20 kilometres southwest of Winton. Around us lies an impossibly perfect landscape; marmalade toned boulders roll up next to sensibly strong mulgas while the distant plains offer a vista so grand, we can sense the curvature of the earth.
The “this” George refers to is the Australian Age of Dinosaurs, a not-for-profit organisation, a laboratory, and a museum of natural history with a single agenda – to dig up bones.
No ordinary bones, mind you, but the priceless reminder of the dinosaurs that freely roamed Queensland’s central west 95 million years ago. A time when pine forests with a luscious understory littered the shores of large freshwater rivers and creeks.
Local farmer David Elliott, discovered the first dinosaur fossil while mustering sheep on his property a little over 20 years ago. Since that initial find, he and a growing team have worked tirelessly to recover dozens of relics around the Winton area.
Some of these have been painstakingly reconstructed into full-scale creatures with fondly dubbed nicknames for display, like “Banjo” and “Matilda”.