Dave the Elasmosaur

Chillagoe sits a long way inland from any ocean, which makes the five-metre marine reptile at the southern entrance to town a deliberately strange welcome. Dave is an elasmosaur – a long-necked plesiosaur that hunted in the shallow inland sea covering much of Queensland during the Cretaceous – and he is here because one was found here.

The fossil that gave Dave his name was uncovered near Chillagoe in 1999. Rather than let the discovery stay a specialist footnote, the Chillagoe Alliance took it to the state's Q150 Community Funding Program, the scheme set up to help towns mark Queensland's 150th anniversary of separation from New South Wales. The application, approved in the program's third and final round in December 2008, was for a life-size reproduction of Dave to be placed at the entrance to the township, and it was funded to the tune of $10,000. The Premier's announcement at the time framed it plainly: the point was to promote the role Chillagoe has played in science.