Lake Mungo, An Ancient and Spiritual Place

Lake Mungo is about 110km northeast of Mildura in the Wilandra Lakes World Heritage Area.  It took us a couple of hours to get to the Main Camp - slow going with about 90km on dirt road.  Lake Mungo is just one of about 13 lakes in the Willandra Creek system.  It has been the site of human habitation for at least 50,000 years.  In 1968, the cremated remains of Mungo Lady were found.  These were dated to about 50,000 years old.  A few years later Mungo Man was found.  At about 45,000 years, his is the oldest recorded ritual burial in the world!  Mungo Man and Mungo Lady would have shared the area with megafauna - giant marsupials - and abundant fish in the lakes.  This is truly an ancient site and has a very spiritual feel about it.

The Visitor Centre has a very good interpretive display with videos illustrating the discoveries and subsequent scientific research.  There are also skeletons of a bettong and hairy nosed wombat, both now extinct in this area, and a display relating to the pastoral history of the area.  Outside the centre is a recreation of the "trackway".  These footprints are of an ancient group of people including a one-legged man and children walking in he area.  The footprints have been used to determine the build and size of the people who made them - they were much taller than us.  A sculpture tells the story of the area and its people. The lake is about 11km across and 35km around and it dried up about 17,000 years ago.  It was fed by overflow from Lake Leaghur which, like the other lakes in the system, is also dry.

As well as the indigenous history of the area there are remnants of the pastoral history with woolsheds at both Mungo and Zanci.

We signed up for the Discovery Tour with an indigenous ranger, Robert, and drove across the lake in convoy to begin our tour.  Being with a ranger we would be able to walk on the lunette, the dunes known as the Walls of China on the eastern side of the lake, and would have the benefit of Robert's excellent knowledge and connection with the area.  We saw the layers of sand and clay dating back to 100,000+years ago - red, yellow and white - which have provided a starting point for dating the ancient finds in the area.  The lunette is so named due to its shape - a crescent moon - and was formed by sand dunes which have been covered by clays and more sand.  The sand dunes are marching eastwards at a rate of about 3 metres each year.  

We saw 50,000 year old fireplaces and also an animal skeleton in situ.  Our 2 hours walking on the lunette was a spiritual experience and we could almost feel the ancestors from so long ago.







In the evening we drove back to see the lunette at sunset - amazing!  We drove back carefully to avoid hitting any of the hundreds of kangaroos we saw.  During the day we it was emus we had to avoid.

The next day we set off on the self-drive tour.  The tour starts at the visitor centre and took us over the lake and around the lunette.  We passed through the scrubby saltbush of the lake and into mallee country.  We stopped off at the lookouts and short walks along the way.  The undergrowth changed from saltbush, to spinifex (porcupine bush) with its needle sharp rolled leaves, to yellow and white daisies.  Sometimes the ground took on a bluish tinge where there were low bluebell like flowers.








The Goat Trap has been set up to trap some of the many feral goats using the one thing they crave in the area - water.  The goats enter the chute to get to the water in the dam where they are trapped until they are collected by the local tribes and sold.





We stopped at Vigars Well which is a waterhole which was used by Cobb & Co coaches and other travellers as a watering place.  While there we walked up the eastern side of the nearby sand dunes.









A few kms from the end of the drive we called in to Zanci Station which was used by the pastoralists as a day area.  A dugout was used as a shelter from the heat of the day.









About 70km and 3 hours later we were back at our campsite. There are a couple of excellent campsites in the National Park - we stayed at Main Camp near the entrance, and we shared it with several kangaroos.  Wildlife is abundant.  We saw bearded dragons, stumpy tail lizards, red and eastern grey kangaroos and emus.









There's plenty of information available on Lake Mungo in the visitors centre at Mildura and the ranger station at Buronga.  There's no phone, WiFi or TV once you arrive there.  One thing we found out about once we got there is a digital guidebook available from www.visitmungo.com.au.  We wish we'd known about it to take with us.  We've got it now so we can relive this ancient and spiritual place.