Lancefield

Located in the geographic centre of Victoria, the small, charming town of Lancefield made headlines in the scientific journals last century with the discovery of a rich fossil bed of long extinct megafauna.

The palaeontologic treasurehouse of Lancefield Swamp on the edge of town revealed the skeletal remains of about 10,000 animals including a kangaroo twice the size of today's western red, a wombat the size of a rhinoceros, a marsupial lion and a giant flightless bird.

Interestingly, the scientists also discovered evidence that man and the huge animals co-existed for about 7000 years in the region. The fossils are now held by the Victorian Museum.

Architectural centrepiece of Lancefield is Old Macedonia House which was built in 1899 as a three-story hotel to cater for Melbourne's rich and famous and is now the Antique Centre of Victoria. It shares the Main Street with a number of preserved old buildings dating back to the 1860s.