My goodness, 2025 has just flown by. So, it’s all good time to try and finish posting about the winter 2023 journey, documenting our way home to Sydney from Mungo, in the south-western corner of NSW.
First, we had to escape the ‘Plains’. It took us much of the morning to get to nearest town, of Balranald, through mostly unsealed roads. But, on the other hand, there’s something mesmerising in seeing such flatness, laid out until infinity.
The highlight of our stay was our tour of Mungo National Park, a short drive away from Mungo Lodge. The Mungo National Park lands sits on the junction of three nations – the Ngiyampaa, the Paakantji, and the Mutthi Mutthi.
It is the home of Mungo Man and Mungo Lady, human remains found in the area from the 1960’s and dated to be 42,000 years old. Footprints on the old muddy lakebed were also found, and dated to a similar period. Replicas of these footprints can be found outside of the visitor’s centre.
Back then, the area was a series of lakes fed by the Lachlan River. The climate was colder and snowfalls were more extensive on the Alps leading to more water flowing downstream. After the last ice-age, the climate became drier and warmer, and with a change in the course of the Lachlan River, the lakes were no longer fed. With erosion, the lake bed is now a flat sandy surface.
The area has a fascinating ancient history that really belies its seemingly unremarkable appearance.
More on the tour in the following post.
Let’s do a bit of a study of the landscape of Mungo, as it’s one that’s new to me. I mean, I have been in our parts of central Australia and even in other parts of western NSW, however, the Mungo landscape is still a bit different from these. For one, the land is almost completely flat. In the distance is some special sand-hills, which we will explore in a separate post.
The soil is red, although I suppose a few degrees less bright than the soil near Alice Springs. The vegetation is relatively typical of a place that’s semi-arid – low scrub with spinifex and saltbush, and smallish eucalyptus trees. It’s the kind of landscape that needs time to soak in, I think, as it’s not one to blow its own trumpet, much of the time.
From a distance, everything might look the same, but if you do a ‘David Attenborough’ and stay still for awhile, you’ll start seeing little birds running around (a type of thornbill perhaps, according to the ‘Compact Australian Bird Guide’, my go-to reference book).
The best time to see these guys is early or late in the day, of course, and the landscape takes on a different cast.
The goal of our August 2023 trip was to visit Lake Mungo National Park. This national park is 120km from Mildura or 160km from Balranald via mostly unsealed roads of varying conditions. It definitely pays to drive very slowly and pick your way through. There wasn’t much if any traffic so we could take our time. Heading in from Mildura wasn’t too bad.
We stayed at Lake Mungo Lodge and had this view from our cabin. We were really in arid territory except it was quite green because the area must have been blessed with rain in recent times. The green makes a great contrast to the red ochre sands.
Having had time to contemplate the landscape, I realised what a big sky I was under. When a storm rolls in, you really do notice.
Static and Silence 