Enter the realm of the dinosaurs
Hidden along the Bass Coast is a pre-historic secret.
Victoria’s Bass Coast has the world’s most diverse range of polar dinosaurs, was the site of Australia’s first dinosaur fossil discovery in 1903, has the oldest and most diverse Australian mammal fossils, and was home to the last of a group of giant amphibians. As you follow the Bass Coast Dinosaur Trail, you will cross Bunurong Country, re-tracing dinosaur’s footsteps across this ancient landscape. With over 10,000 fossils discovered, and new ones still being made, a world of discovery awaits!
The Bass Coast Dinosaurs Trail is being developed to share our secret with the world. The trail will reveal the fascinating world of polar dinosaurs through creative and immersive works across six sites at Inverloch, The Caves, Eagles Nest, Wonthaggi, Kilcunda and San Remo. This is where our ancient past comes alive!
The Bass Coast Dinosaurs Trail experience has been carefully curated so that it is expansive, yet cohesive and connected. Each site will be unique in location, landscape, fossil evidence and the stories it tells. Each stands alone as a discrete experience, whilst also forming part of a cumulative experience; stitched together by an overarching narrative of discovery and exploration.
This new gathering place in the heart of Kilcunda will provide a unique vantage point to consider the mighty forces of nature. Largely unseen, these forces have helped preserved the incredible fossils found along the Bass Coast - the most diverse polar dinosaurs in the world.
The Time Machine will be an interactive sculpture of DNA; 25 billion times larger than life. One side of the double helix is an accurate depiction of the molecules that carry all known genetic code, the other side is a staircase that people climb up eight metres, to look out over the ever-widening rift valley that separates Australia and Antarctica; where polar dinosaurs once roamed.
Gondwana Garden will take you on a journey from the beginning of Gondwanaland to its separation into diverse continents and islands. The new Gondwana Garden will be a wonder-filled experience of the landscape and environment inhabited by the Victoria’s polar dinosaurs, 125 million years ago.
At Eagles Nest, the site of Australia’s first dinosaur fossil discovery, visitors will embark on auditory adventure. A combination of immersive musical composition and compelling poetry will lead visitors throughout the site, transporting them back to the Cretaceous period, when the polar dinosaurs flourished.
We wouldn’t know anything about the polar dinosaurs if it wasn’t for dinosaur hunters who continue to make discoveries along the Bass Coast This augmented reality experience gives visitors an opportunity to meet real-life dinosaur hunters, with a twist…
What is it like to discover a fossil, or identify a dinosaur? These are just some of the discoveries that await you in the Dino Hunters playground. Highly sensory and participatory, this adventure-fuelled playground will explore the science used by real-life dinosaur hunters to investigate Bass Coast’s polar dinosaurs.
The digital field guide will the experience hub for visitors, helping them plan their visit, navigate to points of interested in, track their progress, and activate games and augmented reality experiences. As visitors travel along the Trail, they will be able to track their progress, showing which sites they have visited, completed activities, special offers and events. The field guide will also be used to access location-specific, rich digital content.
The content management system will enrich the onsite experience through immersive 3D animations, images, audio, and video. The flexibility of the content management system will also enable content to be repackaged for different audiences, provide access to content from anywhere in the world, and refresh the experience over time by adding new content and digital experiences.
Not all digital experiences will be via smart devices. Across each site, experiences the onsite experience be explore the use of technology like sensors, haptics, LED displays and full-body tracking. The Bass Coast Dinosaurs Trail digital platform will enrich physical experiences in unexpected and surprising ways.
As visitors progress through different digital activities, they will collect souvenirs, tokens, new content and ‘digital fossils’, as souvenirs of their visit. Some content may only be available when it’s discovered and unlocked. The more collectables visitors accumulate, the more bonus martial they will be able to access, such as special events and regional offers.
New tourism activity, particularly in shoulder and off peak periods would assist the region in achieving stable and continued economic growth. Giving Bass Coast the opportunity to continue to capitalise on the long-term trajectory of tourism. Visitors that come to experience the Dinosaurs Trail are likely to expand their activities into townships and surrounding tourism offer.
The Dinosaurs Trail is a game changer for regional Victoria. It provides a new hero tourism experience that links science, education and nature-based tourism. Our EIA shows it will increase visitor expenditure by up to $8 million by 2030 and up to $11.5 million in 2035. And that it will increase overnight visitation and length of stay up to an additional 72,500 visitors p/a by 2030 and up to an additional 93,000 visitors by 2035.
Opening of the Dinosaurs Trail would see annual visitation in the region grow by 10-20%. Over 10 years, it is estimated that the Dinosaur Trail will add $34 million to the value of the economy and support 418 FTE new and existing jobs.
This is a high value project with a Benefit Cost Ratio of 3.32 with a net benefit of $32 million. It will support 418 jobs and contribute significantly to the existing tourism offer, visitor demand and expenditure. Creating the Trail and high-quality visitor infrastructure will increase economic opportunity, create local jobs, and inspire investment.
Yearly Visitor Expenditure
FTE Jobs Created
Visitors per year
