I visited the southern half of this serial nomination: Naracoorte Caves. It is located 10km south of the town of Naracoorte, some 5 hours drive from Melbourne. Quite a remote location – but it does see its fair share of visitors. There were about 40 other cars in the parking lot when I arrived there on a weekday afternoon. Be aware: the caves are located in the state of South Australia, which has a half an hour time difference from eastern states like Victoria (it’s half an hour earlier here than in Melbourne).

Visits to the most interesting caves are guided tours only. They conduct several of them during the day. Most popular is the Bat tour, where you can watch the large bat population. However, I had arrived just in time to join the Fossil tour. This takes you into Victoria Fossil Cave, the one cave that has earned Naracoorte its WH status.

This Cave is 1.5 km away from the Visitor Centre. It’s a limestone cave about 500,000 years old. It has a variety of dripstone features, and it holds the first fossil bed found at Naracoorte. Later on, they discovered more of them, in other caves too. The animals got trapped here after they had fallen through holes in the surface. The fossil bed is as big as an Olympic swimming pool. It still has a lot of bones in it. The skeletons of two of the most impressive species found here have been put together. One is from a Tasmanian Tiger, the other from a plant-eating kangaroo.

After the tour, I went back to visit the Wonambi Fossil Centre at the entrance of the park. Here they have “reconstructed” some of the larger mammals into complete and moving beasts. It’s all a bit childish. It does however give you a good look at the largest mammal found here: the buffalo-like Diprotodon.