More about life in the Collections at the South Australian Museum

Every drawer held a perfect still life of fossilised bones, trilobites, molluscs, from a millimetre or less in size to the metres of a fabulous Icthyosaur, temporarily housed on the floor and awaiting restoration.

Many of these relics, the Icthyosaur one of them, were found on remote properties and stored in machinery sheds until they found a new life at the Museum. One trilobite, the largest found in Australia, was thought for many years to be an old half-buried truck tyre.

An added fascination was the boxes the fossils were stored in. These ranged from 1920s Redhead matchboxes to tiny cardboard creations with clear windows in the lid, designed for museum display.