20/8/2012
Winton - The age of dinosaurs museum. We have wanted to do the Prep-a-Dino experience for a long time, so excitedly we rose early, left Marg & Tonys Dora at the Caravan Park and drove the 24 Km's to the AAOD facility, the last 12kms is unsealed road taking you up the "jump up" a 75m high, flat topped, rocky hill. The road was corrugated in parts, and we were glad it was only 12 Km's. We were treated to large birds called Bustards( plain turkeys) quite close to the road and flocks of budgies all enjoying the Mitchell grasslands, before getting to the top and taking in the magnificent views.

What a great day - it started with a tour of the lab, followed by our induction as Fossil Technicians . Then we were each assigned a work area with a large rock in which was embedded dinosaur bones, and shown how to use tiny air driven jack hammers, to remove the rock from around the bones, as it takes experience to recognize bone from rock either Steve or George was on hand to help.

Smoko was compulsory and we all had to stop and take it together in the smoko room, a lovely chance to chat and learn more from the lab staff and our fellow voluntary technicians - 8 in all. This is very slow work and makes the mind boggle to think that they will do this to all the bones, of the most complete Dino found in this area, Wade, who was 25m long and 5m tall - as big as the lab we were working in. Wade is a new species, never found before and is yet to be scientifically named. So you can imagine our excitement when we found our own bit of at least 65 million year old bone in the rock, and it could be up to 140 million years old, and each of us knew we were the first person EVER to see it.

At 3:45 we had to sign off and head up to the museum for a tour of the other enormous bones found to date and more mind blowing info about these creatures that roamed our shores so long ago. This experience costs around $66 and was well worth every cent.
To give some appreciation of size, the photo below shows a small white cow bone, alongside the equivalent enormous dinosaur brown bone.