He remembers because the new path in Netherton was paved with limestone chippings, and Graham would take a detour on his route home from school to study the stones and see if he could find any fossils.

This early fascination led to a career which has seen him become one of Britain’s leading geologists, and his work has taken him all over the globe, with jobs in the US, South Africa and Spain. Yet he insists there is nowhere in the world that can touch the Black Country for geological wonder.

“It’s absolutely amazing, there’s nowhere else to touch it,” says Graham, who is one of the experts behind the UK’s largest fossil exhibition in Dudley this weekend.

Activities

The Rock and Fossil Festival 2006 is expected to pull in up to 5,000 visitors, some coming from as far afield as the USA and the Netherlands. A host of activities have been lined up, and a special beer – Holden’s Trilobitter – has even been brewed for the occasion. But what is the fascination with fossils?

“I think in part it is the hunter-gatherer thing, the thrill of the chase,” he says. “Once you find something, it’s yours, and once you start finding rocks you want to find more, to get the whole range.”

And he points out that fossils are our only link to life in prehistoric times.

“Rock formations are like the pages of a book, and the imprints are like the words that tell the story of the earth.”

One thing that is very evident from the fossils that have been found is that the Black Country has pretty much been at the forefront of climate change.

The Black Country was certainly not very black 420 million years ago, when the entire area was submerged under a tropical sea filled with coral reefs that were home to trilobites, sea lilies and brachiopods. We know this because of the fossils found at Wrens Nest in Dudley, Britain’s first geological national nature reserve which celebrates its 50th anniversary at the same time as the festival.

“Wrens Nest is fantastic, everything was left as it was the day it died on some terrible day 420 million years ago.”

The wonder of Wrens Nest lay untouched for millions of years, and was only discovered during the early 19th Century when the area’s rich supply of limestone was being mined.

“Sir Robert Burgess, the David Attenborough of his day, would pay the mineworkers for the fossils, and send them off to America or Russia,” says Graham. “I have seen Dudley fossils in Denver Natural History Museum, at the Natural History Museum in Barcelona, in Japan, Melbourne and Adelaide.”

But this begs the question of why more is not made of the Black Country’s fossil heritage. Chances are, if you asked somebody as close to home as Birmingham about where Wrens Nest was, unless they had an interest in geology, they would not know.

“I think a lot of this is the negative associations to do with the mines,” says Graham.

“When they shut down, men lost their jobs, and people wanted to forget about the mines.”

But he thinks attitudes are changing, with the Dudley earthquake – which happened four years ago – having sparked a lot of interest.

“People want to know why we had an earthquake in Dudley, and what caused it,” he says. The information panels installed around the Dudley Volcano at Barrow Hill, Pensnett, have also sparked a lot of interest, he adds.

“Yesterday an elderly lady came with a collection of stuff she had been given by her grandad in 1910,” he says.

Recognition

“They were from a very famous area called the Parkfield Oak Cast in Coseley, and it was wonderful, it was from an area which was built on probably 80 years ago.”

At the moment Graham is involved in a huge scheme, which if lottery funding was secured, would finally give Wrens Nest the tourist recognition he thinks it deserves.

A bid has been submitted to the Big Lottery Fund for £90 million, £15 million of which would go towards an ambitious £30 million scheme to restore and reopen Dudley’s network of limestone caverns, including the famous Seven Sisters. A futuristic underground train would take visitors on guided tours through the labyrinth between Wrens Nest and the Black Country Living Museum.

If successful, the bid would also lead to a green corridor being created from Walsall Arboretum to Dartmouth Park in West Bromwich, and money would be spent upgrading Wolverhampton’s canal network.

“I am a Black Country man and proud of it,” says Graham. “We have lost many of the old industries, but we can re-establish the area. I feel so privileged to have been born here.”

One thing is for certain. If the bid is successful, and Wrens Nest can establish itself as an international tourist attraction, there are sure to be many more fossil lovers in the Black Country.

The Rock and Fossil Festival will be held at Dudley Museum & Art Gallery and Dudley Concert Hall, both in St James’s Road, on Saturday between 10am and 5pm, and on Sunday between 10am and 4pm.

Popular stories:

• Three week old baby boy found dead in Woodsetton house
• Video – pubs featured in Good Beer Guide
• Video – Tuesday night football review
• Adams opts for tactical switch
• Twin tragedies twelve years apart