The names we give to the objects we collect on our way through the world reflect their purpose: to help us remember. ‘Souvenir’ is French for a memory; ‘memento’ comes from a Latin prayer of commemoration. 

What I remember is a scent. Like Proust’s madeleine, this strange, indescribable bouquet of paper, ink and glue conjures my childhood. But for me, it says dinosaurs. And it wafts from the pages of a book: the catalogue for the 1982 National Museum of Victoria exhibition Dinosaurs from China. I had never smelled this scent before I visited the exhibition, and I’d never seen dinosaur skeletons, either. So, five-year-old Mel, paging avidly through the catalogue, imagined this was the scent of fossils.