Arrival of dinosaurs brings David Elliott’s museum dream closer

David Elliott dreams big as he grabs a dinosaur just as it seems poised to streak across the red ­escarpment of Winton.

Winton Dinosaurs

David Elliott dreams big as he grabs a dinosaur just as it seems poised to streak across the red ­escarpment of Winton.

Where others see arid mesa country stretching west towards outback Boulia, Mr Elliott sees a fascinating landscape of the past teaming with dinosaurs, ­inland seas and rainforests. It’s here that the dinosaur-obsessed woolgrower plans to build his $48 million Australian Age of ­Dinosaurs museum.

His dream came closer to ­reality last week with the arrival of 10 life-size bronze dinosaurs, all created using as a guide fossils found in the past two decades in western Queensland, many by Mr Elliott and volunteers with his not-for-profit Australian Age of Dinosaurs group or palaeontol­ogists from Queensland Museum.

Queensland Premier Anna Palaszczuk last week announced $7 million in funding to seal the 12km of dirt road leading to the ­existing Australian Age of Dinosaurs ­research laboratory and visitors’ centre site, 20km southwest of Winton, which last year attracted more than 27,000 tourists.

“It’s been a big week for us; this is not a pipedream any more,” says Mr Elliott, who admits he no longer spends much time on his sheep property an hour east of Winton. “Western Queensland is the richest area for finding big ­dinosaurs. What we want to do is build a museum that represents all of Australia’s national history, from the first stromatolites 200 million years ago to now — the evolution of Australian life, if you like — but which is first and foremost a dinosaur museum.”

Mr Elliott makes it plain he is no Clive Palmer or Walt Disney and is not interested in building some sort of dinosaur theme park.

Everything in his plans for the phased development of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs centre is based on science and local fossils.

The Winton region was, about 95 million years ago, on the edge of a vast inland river plain, spotted with vast lakes and swamps brimming with fish and crocodiles, and rimmed by forests teeming with dinosaur life.

The bronze dinosaurs now being placed in groups across the 1000ha landscape where Mr ­Elliott’s centre were created following an examination of dinosaur footprints found in fossilised rock at nearby Lark Quarry.

Just arrived is a 500kg model of Big Banjo, Australia’s largest carnivorous dinosaur, a theropod, whose fossilised bones were found 60km from Winton in 2006.

Mr Elliott, who relies on donations, government funding and tourist income to employ 23 staff, says he could not imagine realising his dream of creating Australia’s premier dinosaur museum anywhere other than near Winton. Central to his vision are walking tracks, rock-hopping and plain-streaking bronze dinosaurs and displays of fossils and bones.

“When you visit the Australian Age of Dinosaurs ... you just soak up that primitive landscape and you know you are walking and standing where the dinosaurs lived,” he says.

“Building it ‘way out there’ is part of its strength.”