DAY SIX – LANCEFIELD DIG – LANCEFIELD MEGAFAUNA FESTIVAL
After a very late night (hic!) and a VERY early morning (hello keep cup with very strong tea bag!) we travelled back to Lancefield to help prepare for the big event of the Lancefield Megafauna Festival.
Every year the township of Lancefield embraces it’s unique history and celebrates the fact that, basically, the town is one big treasure trove of Paleontological artefacts and wherever you dig you are likely to find bone from animals that have been extinct for thousands of years! It’s great! They transform the main township into a market festival with performances, food, and all sorts of treasures to buy!
One of the features of this years festival was tours of the dig site. So with everyone prepared to watch out for all sorts of OHS issues regarding the public and what is technically a mining site, we conducted tours of the dig site, allowing the public to see up close and personal what it’s like to dig trenches, sit in pits, and sieve through buckets of sludge. They loved it!
And so did the media! Interviews with SBS news, local print media and various radio talkshows gave us more exposure than we had dreamed of! At one stage I looked up from the bathtubs to see a sea of people, at least 100 members of the public in one tour group alone (of which we had at least 6 tour groups come through – one an hour!), all fixated on the lecture Sanja was giving regarding the process of what we do. It was so inspirational to see their interest and their support in our work.
One of the big drawcards for the Lancefield Megafauna Festival was it’s guest speaker, Tim Flannery. Flannery is a Palaeontologist who has heaps of knowledge regarding megafauna and many different interpretations and hypotheses regarding how the megafauna became extinct. So at 4pm we all trudged over to the main hall, dressed in our dirty flannels and still wearing more than half the swamp, and listened to a great lecture about the history of the Lancefield Megafauna….
……an hour later Andrew, Tim and Cam woke me up……..!
We cleaned up a bit (read tried to scrub the dirt away but gave up when I realised I was taking skin with it!) and did some socialising with some nice wine and canapés…….and then escaped to bed by 8.30pm. I’m such a Nana!