The story of this place
Half a million years ago, a trap in the South Australian limestone caught everything that fell into it — giant wombats the size of rhinos, 3-metre kangaroos, marsupial lions, and the giant Diprotodon, the largest marsupial ever to have lived. The Victoria Fossil Cave at Naracoorte is one of the richest fossil sites in the world, preserving the bones of over 100 vertebrate species, many now extinct. The fossils are so perfectly preserved that scientists have been able to reconstruct what ancient Australia looked like with astonishing detail.
The caves were known to the Boandik Aboriginal people for thousands of years and were re-discovered by European settlers in 1845. The full scientific significance of the fossil deposits wasn't understood until excavation began in the 1960s. UNESCO listed the Naracoorte Caves as a World Heritage Site in 1994. Today, visitors can enter the Fossil Cave and see bones still embedded in rock, exactly as they fell thousands of years ago.