Saturday 23^rd June

Today we booked a guided tour to the Mungo National Park with a company which specializes in the region.  The National Park and the Mungo Lake lie within the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area and were unfamiliar to us before our trip, however we learned that there is evidence of around 40,000 years of human occupation within the Willandra Lakes area. The lakes dried 18,000 years ago, and dating of ancient burials shows that these are the oldest known fully modern humans outside of Africa.  In fact, this is the site of the oldest recorded cremation in the world of Mungo woman and the burial site of Mungo man, discovered only about 45 years ago.

Part of the lake is bordered by what are known as the ‘Walls of China”, a 30km wall of clay and sand which moves according to the winds and rain.  It was like nothing we have ever seen before and certainly added a dimension to our photography collection for the day.  The mounds and hills are built up purely around vegetation and roots of trees.  We saw evidence of sea shells and cooking pits – hard to get the head around the fact they had been there for so many thousands of years.