Renate & Colin Do Western Australia

Volunteers to the Age of Fishes Renate and Colin have recently returned from their trip to Northam,Western Australia for the Australian National Balloon Championships held there in September this year. 

 On their way home they travelled around the south western corner of West Australia. Though the trip was originally intended to be three to four months duration sadly the weather in Western Australia had other plans leaving a fine (thankfully) 2 weeks in Northam for the competition (Crewing for Anton Kerr along with Matthew Rice, plus Jan & Graham Kerr of Balloon Joy Flights).

Along with the Kerrs (Jan & Graham), Renate & Colin headed for the Margaret River region via Fremantle for a few days R&R. While the weather was great they went on winery crawls and visited cheese and chocolate factories. While Jan and Graham had to head home to  business. Renate and  Colin continued on with sight seeing and the occasional cave visit.

Eventually heading down to Walpole and Albany, when the heavens opened they did an did an Eco Cruise on the Nornalup inlet where the guide, an interesting man with a sound knowledge of Australia's geological history started talking about a large fish fossil find in central NSW.  When he expressed he would love to learn more about it,  Colin was happy to inform him that one of his tasks at Age of Fishes Museum is as a tour guide. This was enough to get their guide very exited and asking a zillion questions about our museum in Canowindra.  

 Albany was a washout. They were there for just over a week and it poured every day. In  one 24 hour period they had 80mm plus of rain. Though hoping for a drier time in  Esperance it wasn't to be and upon leaving Albany they were diverted to detours due to road washouts. 

 

On one fine one day though they were able to see went “Stonehenge” a granite  replica of the original henge on England's Salisbury Plain, reproduced  down to the finest detail. Worth a look if ever you are there.

The bad weather followed them back across the Nullarbor to South Australia and though they had intended to go into the North Flinders Ranges it was decided to abort the rest of the trip and head home arriving with the rain in tow, a dry and thirsty Canowindra thanked them.

John & Lorraine’s Excellent Adventure.

Age of Fishes volunteers John & Lorraine recently spent 5 weeks in the UK.

On arrival three days were spent in London recovering from the flight and to see a performance at The Globe Theatre (a bucket list item now ticked off Lorraine’s list) .

Driving south west over a few days they reached Harlyn Bay (Cornwall) near Padstow where they stayed for the next week and celebrating John’s 80th birthday with lunch at Rick Stein’s original seafood restaurant  and lots of day trips to beautiful and interesting locations.  

Heading north over several days to Montrose in Scotland they visited John’s sister. Many day trips were spent appreciating Scotland's magnificent scenery, including the amazing “Falkirk Wheel” which is used in place of eleven (canal) locks, for lifting boats (barges) from one canal to another 30 metres up using about as much power as boiling 8 kettles of water! 

The huge sculptures in the photo are called “The Kelpies” and they celebrate the heavy horses that were used to pull the barges/canal boats before the wheel.

Visitor Numbers Have been Good!

Recent visitor numbers have been very good at the museum and bodes well for the future. Anne Clark along with her team are setting in motion new initiatives to steadily improve the number of visitors such as mail outs to various interest groups, travel clubs, car & motor bike clubs, probus groups, schools, uni’s etc. 

The more people we welcome through our door equates to a much wider exposure to other groups and individuals. This also helps us achieve a far better and more cost effective promotion of the Age of Fishes Museum. 

If you know of any groups looking to visit our museum, please let us know their details and we can get in touch and introduce this museum as a destination to aim for

Changes Are Afoot, or should we say a flipper ...

November 2017 .

In September we fare-welled Warren Keedle under whom the museum experienced a wonderful period of economic growth, financial stability and new direction. 

His introduction of several new initiatives enhanced the experience afforded to visitors to the museum. 

Warren enjoyed bringing in fossils from around the world for sale in the Grossi gift shop and these fossil sales undoubtedly improved both profitability to the shop & the financial stability of the museum in general. 

The legacy Warren left the Age of Fishes Museum is not only a new attitude to customer/visitor experience which will no doubt live on for a long time to come but also as exciting and inclusive environment.

Thank you Warren, thank you for a wonderful journey - you will be very much missed.

And so, on 16 Oct 2017 the Age of Fishes Museum takes great pleasure in welcoming Anne Clark to the role of  Manager of the museum.

Anne comes to us from a teaching background, and with over 30 years experience in teaching in  public, private and International and tertiary education, we're anticipating new and engaging adventures on the horizon

With a Bachelor of Science (Agriculture) under her wing, Anne, the author of 12 text books, has not  only taught science, biology and agriculture in her years in the standard educational stream but has also taught at TAFE, and the department of Parks & Wildlife.

As co-owner of a refrigeration transport business (14 yrs) and currently co-owner of the Adret Pastoral Co. she has experience in budgets, strategic planning & business planning.

So with open arms council, staff and volunteers welcome Anne aboard and look forward to a new era of growth and change for the museum with her leadership & guidance.

PS Anne is a little shy so if want to see what she looks like behind the monitor, you might have to visit 

.