The fossil human skull found at Talgai, Queensland

Situated in the Darling Downs of Southern Queensland, in the vicinity of the town of Warwick, are a series of alluvial flats, watered by the tributary creeks of the Condamine River, which is itself a branch of the Darling. One of these creeks, the Dalrymple, winds a tortuous course through the black-soil country, a few miles north of Warwick, and traverses Talgai Station. In the year 1884, after exceptionally heavy rains, the creek came down in strong flood and overflowed the flats to a width of over half a mile. When the floods subsided, it was found that an old water course or “billabong” had been washed out, leaving a channel about ten feet in depth. A fencer who was at work at Talgai at this time, while traversing this freshly washed-out channel, had his attention arrested by what seemed to he a curiously shaped stone in the side of the cut, lying embedded by itself, not at the bottom, but about three feet up the side. It was firmly fixed in the clay, and in dislodging it he formed the opinion that it had not been recently disturbed. When he had freed it, perceiving that it was a skull, he took it to the proprietor of Talgai Station, from whose son it passed into the possession of Mr. E. A. Crawford, of Greenethorpe, New South Wales. This gentleman, in May, 1914, submitted a photograph of it to Prof. Edgeworth David, F. B. S., Professor of Geology in the University of Sydney, who showed it to Prof. J. T. Wilson, F. R. S. He, immediately perceiving the possibilities, expressed a strong desire to have the specimen itself forwarded to Sydney. This having been done, the preliminary investigations were immediately commenced by Profs. David and Wilson, and the results communicated to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Sydney, in August, 1914(1). Shortly after this, Prof. David made a journey to the site of the discovery. He was fortunate enough to find the original discoverer, who, though a very old man, retained a clear recollection of the circumstances of the find. He visited the locality, and, with a memory still clear as to the local conditions, pointed out to Prof. David, to within a few yards, the spot in the gully where the skull was unearthed. His account of the discovery was as just related, and he was able to identify the formation of red-brown clay, interspersed with nodular concretions of carbonate of lime, as identical with that from the upper portion of which the skull was originally removed.