Long, long time ago

I know, I never told you all about Sydney, but it's too long and hard, so here is a bit about fossils.

We've gotten to know Sonny, a local rock-hound. Sonny is a grizzled and quirky old codger, just as an Aussie rock hound should be. Oh, they prefer to be called,"fossickers." Fossicking is walking around, looking on the ground, or slightly under it, for neat stuff.
We got to know Sonny mostly by Thomas standing and staring at his market stall with all the really cool, shiny, colorful rocks, crystals and fossils. Sonny is unique in retail in that he will see a kid admiring, say a 25 dollar shark tooth and say, "Here, look a bag of smaller ones for 3 dollars."
"You like that peacock ore? Look, here's one for a dollar."
Sonny is in it for the love of rocks.

He told us about Maloney Creek. My American ears heard "Mlaney Crake," but brain eventually translated. He drew us a rough map and we found it. We took some of Thomas's buds when school was closed for "Picnic Day," perhaps the BEST idea for a state holiday EVER . Maloney Creek is about 100k south of Alice; past the Rainbow Valley turn-off, past Jim's Place home of Dinky the Singing Dingo, into more hilly county, then right there, under the road. A couple strands of barbed wire keep the cattle and the road separate. The cattle get to look for fossils all day.

Most of our finds were cephalopods and gastropods.

Living cephalopods are squid, octopus and the nautilus which these fossils resemble most closely. If you don't know and don't want to look up "nautilus," picture a big snail with tentacles. The cephalopods we found had straight shells instead of coiled. They were the predators, hunting these hills in a great sea. Now, they're rocks.
Trilobites can be found here too, but their fossilized tracks in the mud are more common and we found lots of those. Gastropods are snails.We also thought we found some (live) tadpoles. Seemed strange to me to find tadpoles at the end of winter, but we've come to easily accept strange. Also, the pond was so murky with cow prints and slime, I wasn't too keen to get up close. Turns out they are shield shrimp - a living fossil! Shield shrimp live fast and lay eggs so light, they blow around in the wind and hopefully, land where there will be water one day to hatch them.
Found an article about the shrimp in the clay pans near Alice. There's even a nifty 6 minute video. http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2010/s2803581.htm Coincidentally it is written and photographed by Penelope Bergen who will be starting Thomas on violin in a few weeks.