5 April - Canowindra

Now we did travel to Canowindra on Easter Sunday so I we weren’t able to take in all the attractions but we weren’t really aiming to anyway.  David’s parents had told us about the Age of Fishes Museum there which sounded really cool (especially to a science geek like myself) so after egg hunting and a lovely cooked brekkie we were off.  We have done this drive last September as we went to Cowra and then onto Dubbo where we did the overnight camp at Western Plains Zoo (an awesome experience).  Back then it was green, the canola was flowering and it was beautiful.  This time it was brown, dry and rather depressing.  Canowindra is only 30 minutes from Cowra and has a truly spectacular main street that takes you back in time just driving along it – nothing looks like it has changed with most of the shops having old style verandahs and very few of the buildings have been replaced.  After our sojourn at the museum we had lunch at the lovely of Garden of Roses Café (this is not my photo but is a google image).

Age of Fishes Museum

Did you know that one of Australia’s most remarkable fossil finds was by a council road worker in 1955 who whilst grading a Canowindra road turned over a large rock with strange impressions on the bottom.  He pushes  it to the side of the road where it is later spotted a local bee-keeper who notified the Australian Museum in Sydney.  It took a palaeontologist 20 years to refind the original site and finally almost 40 years after its original discovery a major excavation of the site took place.  They found 70-80 tonnes of rocks containing around 4,000 fish fossils from 360/70 million years ago.  The Age of Fishes Museum has been built around this amazing find and the slabs are truly amazing.  This is a small but modern museum that we enjoyed.  There were activities for the kids including looking at fossils under a bifocal microscope and searching for specific fossils in the slabs.  There is a lovely outdoor area with a cool time line showing how the earth has changed over hundreds of millions of years showing where Australia was at that time. It gave my boys a really good visual understanding of gondwana a term they had heard but now really appreciated.

I am not sure I would travel a long way just to go to this museum, but if you find yourself in or near Canowindra it is worth a visit.  Oh and the spectacular fossil site that gave rise to all this material - can you visit or maybe even have a fossick there?  Well no.  Apparently after 10 days the only excavation of this site came to an end and they filled in the dig and reinstalled the road.  Apparently there isn't enough money available to reroute the road and bypass this site to allow a long term dig - interesting priority.

 Mr L and Mr C - looking for fossils at the Age of Fishes Museum.