Cinnamon Melling's two children are "obsessed" with dinosaurs, so she took them to Inverloch in Victoria's Bass Coast region to learn about the area's prehistoric heritage.
"They got to see the first dinosaur fossil in Australia. That was amazing, I didn't even know that existed," she said, referring to a specimen displayed at the Bunurong Environment Centre.
The education session Ms Melling and her children attended was organised by the environment centre, and included a trip to a site examined by palaeontologists over decades.
The site, known as The Caves, harbours polar dinosaur fossils dating back 126 million years.
The area has yielded fresh discoveries in recent years, with a wallaby-sized dinosaur identified from fossils just a short walk along the coastline at the Flat Rocks site in 2019.
During the workshop, geologist and session leader Stephen Broady showed attendees fossilised trees and fault lines from ancient earthquakes.
They searched for a previously discovered dinosaur fossil, but could not spot it among the rocks.
A warning from history
Mr Broady said the workshops introduced children to the concept of animals and plants through time.
"The early mammals that occurred in Inverloch were very tiny, very inconspicuous, but in a sense look at us now," he said.
"We've taken over the world and invented cars and the like, while other animals … have gone extinct.
"It also shows that life is not guaranteed.
"If we don't look after the planet, there's plenty of examples of animals that have not made it because something went wrong and we are not immune from that."
Mr Broady said the environment centre had to turn people away from the dinosaur sessions due to their popularity.
"Besides the school holiday programs … there's a constant stream of school excursions during school terms, both with the dinosaurs and just the general geology down the coast," he said.
"It's a very popular site for all of those activities."
$40 million dinosaur tourism plan
Bass Coast Shire Council is seeking to capitalise on people's enthusiasm for dinosaurs with a large tourist attraction that will cost $40 million to build.
The design plans include six creative experience sites spread over 40 kilometres from San Remo to Inverloch, which will link polar dinosaur fossils with each location.
A dinosaur-themed playground and museum are proposed at a site near the Bunurong Environment Centre in Inverloch.
The project is expected to generate $36 million in value within the Bass Coast economy by 2035.
Bass Coast Shire Council chief executive Ali Wastie said the dinosaur trail would be "an exciting, unique and valuable tourism asset" celebrating "the global significance" of the region's prehistoric heritage.
The council expects the designs to be finalised shortly and will share them with community members by the middle of this year.
Mr Broady said the trail would be a positive move for the community.
"There's the public interest … [the council is] facilitating being able to do more of it and do it great," he said.
"If families can wander along the trail, read information signs, even incorporate activities at certain points, it can only be great for palaeontology."
Mr Broady said the benefits would outweigh any potential risks that an increased number of people would pose to the sites.
"On balance it's probably better to have more awareness, to really use it as an educational tool, because it is a resource and we're very lucky down here to have all the fossils and the interest and the science going on," he said.
There have been cases of deliberate damage to the fossils, with vandals using a hammer to damage a 115-million-year-old dinosaur footprint in 2017.
Fossil search continues
Mr Broady said children often found leaf fossils when they smashed rocks during the sessions.
"The details in some of the leaves have the midvein … a lot of the structures are preserved, rather than these black blobs that more commonly are found," he said.
Professionals are continuing to search the region too.
Earlier this year, a team of palaeontologists, researchers and volunteers excavated sections of the foreshore at the Flat Rocks site for the first time since the COVID pandemic began.
Dinosaur Dreaming dig coordinator Lesley Kool said in a statement the group had unearthed almost 20,000 fossilised bones since it began examining the site in 1994.
"It's a unique part of the coastline … [the rocks are] some of the oldest Cretaceous rocks in Australia," Ms Kool said.
While Ms Melling's children did not find a fossil during the workshop, she said it was "pretty exciting" that finding one was a possibility.
"The kids do well when it's touching and feeling and you can get your hands all dirty and mess about in the rock pools," she said.
