I don’t think the early colonials knew what they were getting themselves into when they found the first big bones in Wellington Caves. This is a replica of one creature they found.

It’s the size of a hippo, but there wasn’t anything remotely as big in Australia these days. So what could it be?

They found a diprotodon. It’s a wombat-like herbivore, a marsupial, but one that was between the size of a hippo and an elephant. They were around one million years ago, when the area around Wellington Caves was much wetter, and there was much more vegetation to eat. They died out perhaps 25 to 50 thousand years ago, although scientists are still arguing why (climate change?).

Imagine having one of those roaming the back paddock.