Ancient Landscapes
Thylacine Design
2021: Judges Choice – Projects over $150,000


The Ancient Landscapes Gallery is a place-based, permanent exhibition that invites visitors to explore the multi-layered significance of the Wellington Caves Reserve.
Using large-scale immersive multi-media, objects, and interactivity, the Gallery offers visitors an insight into the changing face of the site. Visitors travel from the deep past to today, through four key themes: the Devonian, the Pleistocene, the Wiradjuri First People, and the recent past. Each theme is framed as a snapshot into a particular moment in time, as though looking through a window, with the landscape of the Caves Reserve the one consistent point of reference.
The goal of the Gallery was to contextualise the 400-million-year history of the site, and its multiple levels and periods of significance, and to make them accessible to visitors. It was developed in collaboration with scientists and subject experts across Australia and has been designed with a focus on making scientific history immersive, exploratory, and fun.
The Ancient Landscapes Gallery is a stand-alone, permanent gallery within the Visitors Centre of Wellington Caves Reserve, NSW.
Project Team:
Creative Director: Caolan Mitchell
Designer: Ceci Wilkinson
Curator: Isa Menzies
Wiradjuri content: Louise Austin
Graphics: Lis Cherry
Animation: Eye Candy Animation
Welcome video production: Good Shout
Lighting design: Interactive Controls
Fabrication and installation: Thylacine make team
3D printed Diprotodon: Studio Kite
Text panel production: Screenmakers
Project Management: Ceci Wilkinson