SYDNEY—Between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day people pause from the hectic holiday pace before the next round of festivities. Some stay home, perhaps catch up on their reading or simply catch their breath. Others take the opportunity to engage in an activity not always manageable during the regular work week. 

That period last year overlapped with a weekend—ideal for a road trip, my daughter Giselle thought, especially because I was in town. Our destination: Mollymook in the South Coast of New South Wales, three and a half hours from Sydney.     

What’s in Mollymook? We’ll soon find out, she had said in a playful tone. 

The beach is a popular surfing spot, volunteered a friend. It did not sound promising to this landlubber. Still, I would be happy just to walk on the sand, swathed in the matching vivid blue of the Australian sea and sky.   

I did get my feet wet, though, in the first of three unusual tourist activities that took us farther, not in distance but in time.   

Four minutes from our lodging was the adjacent town of Ulladulla. At the harbor, we walked down a pavement leading to the rock platforms, or horizontal surfaces formed by repeated wave erosion over time. There we searched for fossils.  

Supercontinent

The area around Ulladulla Harbor is rich in fossils of marine life dating back 270 million years. It lies along the coast of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, which broke up into several landmasses about 180 million years ago. 

(Ulladulla is Aboriginal for “safe harbor.” Mollymook is believed to have gotten its name from the mollymawk, a type of albatross.)

A nonprofit conducts a two-hour guided tour called Gondwana Coast Fossil Walk. We missed it. It was fine with Giselle, a geologist, although she said having a guide was better as people would not know what to look out for—as was the case with me. I was also careful not to slip. The platform surface was generally flat and relatively smooth, but it was wet and rugged, with crevices and rock pools. 

Only when I consulted Giselle did I realize that I had passed—no, stepped on—some fossils. I was under the notion that fossil hunting required digging or scraping surfaces in sites that one would need a map to locate. I did not imagine fossils to be out in the open. 

So, the variedly shaped impressions on the rock were indeed fossils. Most looked like pressed plants and flowers; others were miniature abanicos, which were really shells of clam-like marine invertebrates. There were also fish skeletons.   

I later read that the Ulladulla Harbor rock platforms are primarily sedimentary rock, where fossils are commonly found. Organisms buried under sediments like sand and silt over long periods are compacted and protected from decomposition. Thus, sedimentary rocks are fossiliferous, meaning they hold fossils.

The guided walk covers a 500-meter area and is scheduled at low tide. It is suitable for all ages, mostly groups of students from grade school through graduate school. It begins with a briefing on the geological history of Australia and the groups of fossils found at the site. 

A guidebook lists the four groups of fossils: crinoids, commonly called “sea lilies,” a kind of starfish and sea urchin that latch onto the sea floor; gastropods, or sea snails with hard shells that have protected them from extinction; bivalve mollusks, soft-bodied invertebrates with spade-shaped feet for digging in the mud; and brachiopods, which lived in the mud or were attached to the sea floor, feeding on particles carried by the current.

A collection of fossils sourced from all over Australia and overseas is on display in the Fossil House, a modest cottage that used to be the town’s oldest house (circa 1850). We dropped in on a Sunday, and found it closed. However, displayed by the front door like a sentry was a chunk of rock from the Gondwana Coast. 

12 geological periods

Our next time travel took us twice farther back by 510 million years. Ironically this walk was less than half as long and much easier. It is self-guided along a 255-meter pavement with 21^st-century signage. It is in a park in a residential area with lush gardens.

The Geological Time Walk in Brodie Park outlines the formation of the Shoalhaven region, the area in the South Coast where Mollymook and Ulladulla are located. It takes visitors through 12 geological periods, represented by boulders of local rocks laid out in chronological order.  

A brochure explains that the boulders depict the major geological events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that affected the region. Studying the composition of the boulders shows how these natural occurrences transformed the Earth’s surface.   

This geological time walk is one of only seven in the world.  

On the welcome marker, the inscription reads in part: “Your journey begins with the oldest rocks found in this region…Every meter along this path takes you two million years toward the present.” 

The starting point is the Cambrian geological period (541 to 485 million years ago) when the Shoalhaven region was the floor of a vast ocean more than 4 kilometers deep. The region remained submerged during the Ordovician Period (485 to 444 million years ago), emerging only during the early Permian period (298 to 252 million years ago). 

It became part of the supercontinent Gondwana during the Carboniferous period (358 to 298 million years ago) when tectonic activity ceased.

The time walk ends with the Quaternary period (2.6 million years ago to the present).

I breezed through the walk, science going over my head. Giselle found it well thought out, with information provided along the way. To her, it was an instant refresher course that set her off on her own side trip down Memory Lane.  

At the Jurassic station (201 to 145 million years ago) she recalled, amused, her class’s “review” of the Steven Spielberg blockbuster, noting certain scientific inaccuracies but conceding artistic license. For example, the Tyrannosaurus rex was from the next period, Cretaceous (145 to 66 million years ago).

Continuing our walk, we reached an intersecting trail, marked One Track for All. As the name suggests, it is an easy walk in the bush, with stunning, sweeping views of the coast and harbor from lookout decks.    

Aboriginals’ arrival 

Like the two previous walks, this one also tells a story about the place, its culture and people. It is told from an Aboriginal perspective in nuggets of information illustrated by wood sculptures and relief carvings by local artist Noel Butler, an indigenous elder and sustainability advocate. 

The first Aboriginals arrived in this region about 40,000 years ago, at least 20,000 years after those in the Northern Territory. 

Most relief carvings are installed along the track, like an outdoor exhibit. Among those we passed was a set of carvings on a bench showing the Aboriginals’ watercraft, like canoes and rafts, alongside the white settlers’ boats and ships. Elsewhere another set of carvings shows tools and weaponry: spears, boomerangs, nets, traps; and rifles and muskets. 

The Aboriginals relied on the region’s rich marine resources for food and livelihood. This is showcased in another set displayed on a lookout deck. The barrier serves as background for carvings of fish and shellfish caught in the area, like salmon, snapper, dusky flathead, bream and calamari. 

For three days, this fish lover feasted on fish and chips—from paper-wrapped takeaway to the elegantly plated dish served with tartar sauce and mushy peas at the hotel restaurant of British chef-author-tv show presenter Rick Stein. 

One standing carving had a handwritten (etched) greeting and message beside it: Wada! Keep your maburah (eyes) open. Watch where you put your dhana (foot). Lots of things live here! 

Another read: Let’s work together to respect the values of our natural heritage. And always enjoy Ngulla Dulla, our home. Wada!

Unfortunately, time and the elements have taken their toll on the installations. Many were cracked and washed out, badly needing repair and restoration.  

Winding up our walk at around 6 p.m. (still light in December), we headed to a food shop for dinner, which we ate picnic-style on Mollymook beach. 

An ancient land

The day’s experiences took me back to my first trip to Australia almost 30 years ago with a group of colleagues, among them Ester Dipasupil and CoverStory editor Chato Garcellano. 

We went to the Blue Mountains, famous for the blue haze attributed to the eucalyptus trees, two hours from Sydney. After showing us around the usual tourist sites, our guide, a former high school geology teacher, drove us to a bushland area fenced off from the public. 

There, like the artist Noel Butler, he showed us plants that grew in the area, one of which was the grass tree “from which, he said, all pine trees are descended,” as Chato noted in her report. 

On a subsequent trip, I learned that only two years earlier, in 1994, a conifer believed to have become extinct before the time of homo sapiens was discovered accidentally by an off-duty parks and wildlife ranger in a secluded section of the Blue Mountains Park.  

The Wollemi Pine is one of the world’s rarest and oldest living trees. It is from the same geological period as the T. rex; thus, it is also called “Dinosaur Tree” even though it outlived the dinosaurs. Now a critically endangered species, Wollemi Pine has not evolved significantly over time, and is thus also called a “living fossil.”

It was only while writing this story that I read through the Geological Time Walk brochure, and came across the most astonishing facts. 

The Earth’s crust formed about 4,600 million years ago. Our geological time walk took us “only” as far back as 510 million years because that is when New South Wales and the entire eastern side of Australia formed.  

The western half formed way much earlier, with the oldest parts, in Western Australia, known to be about 4,000 million years old! 

From 30 years back, the words of our Blue Mountains guide echoed in my mind: “Australia is an ancient land.”