Qualla: Lake Callabonna https://qualla.com/lake-callabonna en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:28 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/e/x/lake-callabonna-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Lake Callabonna https://qualla.com/lake-callabonna Lake Callabonna: Introduction https://qualla.com/lake-callabonna/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The killer was the ground itself. During the last Ice Age, the waters of this shallow inland lake would shrink in the dry years, and as they retreated they left behind a deceptive crust of salt and gypsum baking hard in the sun. To a thirsty three-tonne animal it looked like solid footing. It was not. Beneath the crust lay soft black mud that never dried, and when the heaviest creature Australia has ever produced stepped out toward the last shrinking water, its legs punched through and held fast. Lake Callabonna, a 160-square-kilometre sheet of white roughly 120 kilometres southwest of Cameron Corner, is the place where the giants of Ice Age Australia came to die in their hundreds.

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Image: Tentotwo | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/e/x/lake-callabonna-wp/r4ex-lake-callabonna-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Lake Callabonna: The Bone-Bearers of Diprotodon https://qualla.com/lake-callabonna/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The animal mired here was Diprotodon, the largest marsupial that ever lived. Picture a wombat scaled to the size of a rhinoceros: up to four metres from nose to tail, standing nearly two metres at the shoulder, and weighing as much as 2,800 kilograms. They moved across the inland...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/e/x/lake-callabonna-wp/r4ex-lake-callabonna-the-bone-bearers-of-diprotodon.mp3 0:06 2 full Lake Callabonna: A Stockman's Discovery https://qualla.com/lake-callabonna/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. European science learned of the bones almost by accident. Aboriginal people of the region had long known the lake held the remains of huge creatures, and in 1892 an Aboriginal station hand named Jackie Nolan showed the giant skeletons embedded in the dry surface to the lessee of ...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/e/x/lake-callabonna-wp/r4ex-lake-callabonna-a-stockmans-discovery.mp3 0:06 3 full Lake Callabonna: Completing an Ancient Puzzle https://qualla.com/lake-callabonna/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Callabonna fossils did more than fill a museum. They solved a mystery that had defeated the greatest anatomist of the age. When the English scientist Richard Owen first reconstructed Diprotodon, he could not work out the shape of its feet, and famously had his artist hide the...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/e/x/lake-callabonna-wp/r4ex-lake-callabonna-completing-an-ancient-puzzle.mp3 0:06 4 full Lake Callabonna: Closed Ground https://qualla.com/lake-callabonna/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Recognising what lay beneath the surface, the colony set the lake aside as a Fossil Reserve in 1901, a protection that still stands. The lake was added to the South Australian Heritage Register in 1997 for its palaeontological significance, and administrative responsibility rests...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/e/x/lake-callabonna-wp/r4ex-lake-callabonna-closed-ground.mp3 0:06 5 full