Lawn Hill to Home via Riversleigh.

This is the last installment in our trip to Adels Grove, we travelled home via Riversleigh to Mt Isa and then on to Cloncurry. Riversleigh was amalgamated into the Boodjamulla National Park in 1992 but fossil remains were found there in the early 1980's. It wasn't until 1994 that they realised the significance of the area and it was declared a world heritage area.The Riversleigh fossil field section of the park covers an area of approximately 80 square kilometres and the fossils found there date back 25 million years ago.There are only one or two places on the planet where animal remains are preserved so well because they are in the soft limestone rock. Many different species of animal has been found there and comes from a time when the area was covered by sea to being a lush rain forest to the arid open grasslands of today. Can't believe that people of today think climate change is a new thing!!. Most of the fossil fields are closed to the public but there is a public viewing area as well so lets have a look around.



At the base of the hill in amongst the trees is a man made cave that is the start of the walking trail.

Inside the cave has more interpretive information.

The midday sun ruined this photo of two of the animals whose fossils were found here.

 

Not sure where the fossil was in this rock so I just took the photo of the whole thing.

The trail takes you from the cave around to the top of the hill and then back down the other side to the cave. Looking east from the top.

These strange looking rocks are everywhere, round pieces of quartz glued together with some other type of rock.

Looking back to the car park from the top. There are pallets of pavers there for paving the walking trail at some stage.

Walking trail back to the cave.

One last look around.

The road home.

The Gregory River, this crossing can be very deep. The water runs all year round and is very fast flowing. 

The sign says it all at the approach to O' Shanassy River.

The O'Shanassy crossing looks safe enough but a caravan came off here the day before we arrived.

 Looking down stream from the O'Shanassy crossing.

 Unnamed creek crossing.

This guy was lost and asked us for directions, he was delivering fuel for a council gang along the road, we never saw anyone.  We came across the council another 80 km down the road turns out he was on the right track but one day early. This road is approximately 250km of dirt but mostly is in good order with only a few sections of corrugations. We hope you enjoy our blog as much as we enjoyed our trip, it was 4 days full on but it was great to see some more of the gulf country.