The treasure trove hiding in the South Australian desert

In the red dirt of the outback, we discover a vast treasure trove of fossils that were once the first creatures on Earth.

I knelt in the warm, red dirt on a low hill in the Flinders Ranges. To the west a sandy plain stretched towards the vast Lake Torrens salt flat. To the east the zig-zag outline of the Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park was silhouetted against the morning sky.

Ross Fargher knelt next to me and pointed to a slab of rock with dents, grooves and patterns all over it. "Put your hand on that fan-like shape there," he instructed. "You're touching the fossil of one of the oldest known animals ever found on Earth. It's called a Dickinsonia and it was alive 550 to 560 million years ago when this was a shallow, tropical sea bed. That's more than 300 million years before the first dinosaurs."

Ross pointed to another mark in the rock. "That spiral-shaped one is an Aspidella and it's from the same period," he said. "And there's a Spriggina over there."

To my amateur eye there were scores of fossils on the one 20-square-metre slab but I was underestimating. Ross and the international palaeontology team studying the slabs have found an average of 200 to 300 fossils on each one.

These are the imprints of wriggling worms, swaying fronds, drifting jellyfish-type organisms and the like, which are collectively known as Ediacaran biota - the first animals on Earth.

Ross found the fossils on his station - Nilpena - some years back, leading to part of it becoming the Nilpena Ediacara National Park, a new park which only opened to the public in April 2023. Kym Geue, the park's Ranger in Charge, said the collection is unique. "These kinds of fossils are very rare," he said "because it's nearly always hard-bodied creatures that leave fossils, not soft-bodied ones like these.

"They do exist in a few other spots around the world but there they are extricated individually. Here we are excavating large and complete sections of the ancient sea bed, revealing entire ecosystems that were at the peak of their diversity when they were fossilised. Nowhere else has this been done."

As Ross and I sat in the dirt of the ancient sea bed, time-travelling back more than half a billion years, my head was spinning. Hardly anywhere on the planet can you see and touch such ancient things.

"We get that a lot," said Ross. "Even I still find it hard to appreciate just how old these things are."

To protect this treasure trove, visits are by appointment only on one of two tours. I was on the fossil field tour, which includes a guided drive to the fossil site and a brilliant indoor audio-visual experience housed in the station's former blacksmith shop. If you're time-poor you can do just the AV experience. Either way, you'll get to touch seriously old fossils.

The Nilpena fossils are one of South Australia's compelling arguments to have the Flinders Ranges inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for its unparalleled record for the dawn of animal life. The bid is due to be lodged in early 2025.

I witnessed another excellent reason for granting the status that afternoon, after waving cheerio to Ross and driving the stunning Parachilna Gorge to a remote spot near Blinman.

Standing next to his ochre-stained ute was Kristian Coulthard, a local Adnyamathanha man who made my head spin even more. More rocks, more dents and grooves but these were not fossils, they were petroglyphs - images carved into boulders thousands of years ago. In minutes, Kristian vividly brought the dents and grooves to life for me, telling stories so vivid you can almost see the events occurring in front of your eyes. He interpreted one set of carvings that told the story of an initiation ceremony. Another represented a camp but the most thrilling was the one about the giant wombat.

"These circles represent the camp," Kristian said. "Then coming right through that camp are these tracks. That's the giant wombat. That's a direct link back to when megafauna roamed the land and it helps us date these petroglyphs because we know these animals died out about 27,000 years ago - the carvings must be at least that old."

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When people carved these images the animals we know today as cute and cuddly were big and dangerous.

"The fella the people drew here would probably have been a bit bigger than your standard SUV," said Kristian. "And over here," he said, moving on to a neighbouring rock, "you can see part of a giant lizard that would have grown up to six metres long."

Kristian's knowledge has been passed down to him from generation to generation, from when rock art was the language of his ancestors. Some things they witnessed here thousands of years ago were clearly significant enough for them to feel they had to tell others. The petroglyphs shared information about culture and living and surviving on country.

They were 27,000-year-old Instagram posts and I immediately "liked" all of them.

Getting there: The Flinders Ranges are about a five-hour drive north of Adelaide. The Adelaide Airport website has a handy rental car-comparison section. See adelaideairport.com.au

Staying there: The Prairie Hotel in Parachilna has Heritage Rooms from $310 per night. See prairiehotel.com.au

Touring there: The Prairie Hotel's Nilpena Ediacara Extended Fossil Tour is $195 per person (minimum four guests). See prairiehotel.com.au. The shorter AV Experience tour - or Ediacara Experience tour - is $82 but does not include visiting the fossil beds. See parks.sa.gov.au. Wadna has a range of excellent guided tours that start from $100 per adult. See wadna.com.au

Explore more: flindersandoutback.com.au

The writer was a guest of the Prairie Hotel and Wadna.

Pictures: SATC; Matthew Brace