$6M Outback Natural history museum taking shape

THE WALLS are going up at the $6.615 million Eromanga Natural History Museum’s new visitor centre, café, theatre, interpretative corridor and amenities.

The walls are going up at the $6.615 million Eromanga Natural History Museum’s new visitor centre, café, theatre, interpretative corridor and amenities.

SOMETHING else is coming out of the ground at Eromanga and it’s not another huge dinosaur bone.

The walls are going up on the $6.615 million Eromanga Natural History Museum’s new visitor centre, café, theatre, interpretative corridor and amenities.

The roof went on Tuesday and the building is expected to be completed within weeks.

“Then it will be all about doing the interior which is slow and fiddly,” museum general manager Robyn Mackenzie said.

“This is going to be a very high-quality natural history museum in the Australian outback.”

The regional museum will be an vital hub of dinosaur and megafauna research, education and preservation, housing a diverse collection of ancient species - including the largest animal to have walked the earth.

Eromanga was placed on the dinosaur map in 2004 when 14-year-old Sandy Mackenzie spotted an unusual rock while mustering on the family property.

It turned out to be the remains of a new genus and species of dinosaur discovered in Australia – the titanosaur – and the largest dinosaur specimen unearthed in the country.

That internationally significant find led to more and the eventual establishment of a workshop shed which has been acting as stage one of the museum.

The new building is considered stage 2A and eventually a further two-storey gallery will be added to display the life-size titanosaur.

Ms Mackenzie said the museum was not only an important scientific facility but would become a regional tourist attraction.

“We are adding more phases and we’ll keep adding on and adding on,” she said.

“It’s a massive project and this stage will look tiny by the time the whole thing is finished.”

Ms Mackenzie said the museum was unique for its collection of both dinosaurs and megafauna which were the oversized marsupials such as “hippo-sized wombats” that roamed after dinosaurs were wiped out.

Its location close to dig sites scattered across the Eromanga basin was a valuable advantage, giving visitors a truer sense of the landscape and ancient story.

Stage 2A was jointly funded by the federal government’s Building Better Regions fund ($3.615 million), the state government’s Building Our Regions fund ($2.4 million) and the Quilpie Shire Council ($600,000).

The walls are going up at the $6.615 million Eromanga Natural History Museum’s new visitor centre, café, theatre, interpretative corridor and amenities.

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