GORDON White is now a spritely 78-year-old who has moved about ‘up north’ a fair bit during his lifetime.
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When he was 15 or 16, he was fossicking for sapphires on Inverell Station at the foot of nine foot wash in Swanbrook Creek, and it was there he found a very curious item.
It appears to be a fossilised foot, but it also appears to have too many toes although it seems to have very clear impressions of toenails. Just to confuse the casual observer a little bit more, there looks to be a fossilised thumb on top of the ‘toes’.
To describe it as a curiosity is an understatement. Gordon recently rediscovered the item among his belongings and decided to share it with The Times.
“I’d been sniffing around a bit and looking for something when n I came across a bag with it in it. I thought I’d lost it, put it down to someone having flogged it, you know?” Gordon said.
“It’s a freaky looking stone. I remember I thought it looked like a petrified foot the day I found it.
“I was out there recently, and you know, that wash is still there; same as it was all those years ago.”
The stone has never been taken to an authority to gain further insight into its origins and so, for the moment, remains a curiosity. And Gordon agreed that what it looked like and what it actually was could very well be two entirely different things.
