The Barrabool Hills vegetation. Part 2 – The arrival of Homo sapiens

Meganesia was a land mass that included Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania

Meganesia.

Homo sapiens first arrived in Australia about 60,000 years ago when the climate was colder and dryer. Evidence suggests that the Wadawurrung people have lived in the Geelong region more than 40,000 years. At that time the world was in the grips of the last great ice age. 

'Ark' Australia, home to a remarkable and unique mix of plants and animals, was about 4km south of where it is today. It had been slowly drifting north for 30 million years after breaking away from Antarctica.

'Ark' Australia was then part of a greater land mass called Meganesia which included Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania and the low plains in between. 

Its time to climb on board our amazing time machine and travel back to the Barrabool Hills in the far south of the great continent of Meganesia. We arrive in late summer on a perfect windless day. The undulating hills are much as we know them today though we notice the animals are much larger and we are surrounded by a forest of tall acacias.

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