I visited this WHS in January 2018, focusing on South Australia's only WHS - Naracoorte Caves National Park. I had prebooked online (32 dollars) to secure a place for the Victoria Fossil Cave guided tour at 14:15 (it takes roughly 1 hr). If there are any palaeontologist geeks who would like to invest more time (and money!) there's also a WH tour to Victoria Fossil Cave and Blanche Cave to also visit research areas not usually seen by the general public.

After a long drive from the Great Ocean Road (at least you 'gain' 45 minutes if driving from the state of Victoria), we parked at the Wonambi Fossil Centre. Here we collected our tickets, and got a brief visual introduction of some fossils and how the megafauna must have looked like by doing the self-guided walk through a simulated forest and swampland geared mostly at entertaining children. There are several information boards displaying inscription on the WH list just next to the entrance and the only cafe and toilet facilities available around. We drove again to the Victoria Fossil Cave (some 2-3km away) to meet our guide. Even though the number of people visiting the cave at any one time is capped to 25, it felt a bit too crowded at times. The temperature inside the cave is a constant 17 degrees Celsius so it's not too bad and a welcome change from the outside heat.

Apart from a few rather ordinary cave features, the highlight of the cave is the fossil deposit (which is still being excavated) behind the two replica fossils with a spotlight in front of them to amplify their shadow (photo). The fossils of the Naracoorte caves accumulated over the last 500,000 years, a period of the world's history marked by a series of ice ages. The fossils are very well preserved in sediment deposits within the caves. They represent a large number of vertebrate species and provide an opportunity to study the impact of climate change on biodiversity before and after Australia was populated.

Each deposit can potentially give a snapshot of life during the Pleistocene epoch as well as provide evidence for changes in climate and vegetation. Whereas Riversleigh provides a view of the ancestors of the Australian fauna, Naracoorte's fossil record spans a period when their descendants became extinct. Both sites were inscribed on the WH list as outstanding examples representing major changes of the world's evolutionary history and as outstanding examples representing significant ongoing ecological and biological evolution.

The largest fossil deposit was discovered in the Victoria Fossil Cave in 1969 and further exploration has led to more fossil areas being discovered within the cave, the most recent being in 2000. It is believed that most of the megafauna found here ended up in this dark pit because they fell incidentally through a rather small opening in the ceiling of the cave. Of the several species of megafauna fossils found here, the most important were the large rainbow serpent, Wonambi naracoortensis, believed to have inhabited the dark cave and which preyed upon the unfortunate mammals which fell in the cave, and the Marsupial Lion, Thylacoleo carnifex, which had a very peculiar jaw bone and human-like fingers.

After exiting the cave, we had initially planned to go for a short walking trail to other caves before heading to our hotel at Bordertown. However, due to a catastrophic fire alert announced for the following day and because of an unpleasant surprise when trying to reconfirm our sunset trip for the next day with Harry Nanya tours, we opted to drive straight to Mildura to be able to visit Willandra Lakes first thing in the morning before temperatures reached the forecast 50+ degrees Celsius. More on that, in my next review :)