HEIR OF ALL THE AGES
The ancient landscape of Lake Mungo in western New South Wales has a mysterious, timeless quality. Buried
in its sands is an age-old story that, little by little, is being revealed to those who are patient enough to wait
and watch. For the traditional owners, this is the story of their ancestors and it is told by the spirits of their
country.
BY ROS STIRLING
O
NCE, a very long time
ago, this was a land of
broad, shallow lakes that
were fed by the waters of
a stream until each lake overflowed
and poured its excess into the one
below. The chain of lakes teemed
with fish, yabbies and mussels.
Waterbirds flocked in their
thousands on the shores, feeding in
the shallows and on the mud flats.
On higher ground, swamplands and
sand dunes gave way to woodlands
and, beyond them, wide plains
where many animals and birds lived.
The seasons were cool, and plentiful
rain and melt from the distant
snowy mountains kept the stream
flowing and the lakes topped up.
40 Australian Heritage
People lived here too, making
their huts and their hearths along
the shores of the lakes. They lived
well, eating fish and shellfish, the
meat of kangaroos and wallabies,
smaller animals like possums and
quolls, snakes and lizards, waterfowl
and their eggs, fruits, grains, nuts
and roots.
They cooked large catches such as
kangaroo and emu in hot coals
buried in ovens dug into the
ground, while smaller animals like
lizards, fish and small marsupials
were barbecued on open fires. Their
tools and weapons were skillfully
made from wood and stone,
sometimes collected or traded from
country many days’ walk away.
The people of the lakes lived in
close-knit tribal groupings, sharing
the bounty of their country. Their
spiritual life was rich, and they
buried their dead with care and
ceremony.
It was an idyllic life that lasted for
countless generations, but it did not
last forever. A different time came,
when the weather became colder,
and less rain fell. Sometimes, the
seasons came and went without
rain; the streams stopped flowing
and the lakes began to dry out. A
cold, dry wind blew incessantly from
the west. The grasslands became
sparse and fewer animals grazed on
them. People walked and chased
game across the mud of the lake bed
The secrets of Lake Mungo
where once they had paddled their
bark canoes.
Drought continued year after year.
Every so often there would be a
respite, and wet seasons brought the
waters tumbling down the stream
and into the lakes once more, but as
time went by the dry years far
outnumbered the wet. There came a
time when the lakes were empty,
and the mud at the bottom
hardened into a brittle shell that
cracked and crumbled into fine
powder. The west wind kept
blowing, picking up the powder and
blasting it against the low sand hills
of what had once been the lakes’
eastern shores. Saltbush took root in
the lake beds to create vast, flat
grey-blue plains.
The people continued to live in
the much changed landscape of
their ancestors. It was now a hard
life and their numbers were greatly
reduced but, drawing on their fine
hunting skills and knowledge of
their country, they survived and for
thousands of years carried forward
the sacred knowledge of their
dreamtime and the spirits of the
land in their language, their songs,
their stories and their ceremonies.
In 1967, the ancient story of Lake
Mungo had been all but forgotten
when geomorphologist, Professor
Jim Bowler, visited the Willandra
Lakes area. His particular study was
the changes in climate that had led
up to the most recent ice age,
around 20,000 years ago.
The descendants of some tribal
groups who had once lived in the
area – the Mutthi Mutthi, the
Paakantji and Ngyiampaa – now
mostly lived in nearby towns or on
surrounding pastoral stations. The
land of the Willandra Lakes had
been leased to graziers from 1860 in
one huge lot known as Gol Gol
Station, and in 1921 this had been
subdivided into ‘soldier settlement’
properties, including Mungo and
Zanci Stations.
On his first visit to the region Jim
Bowler had examined the dunes
around the eastern edges of the dry
bed of Lake Mungo, a spectacular
crescent-shaped range rising above
the otherwise flat landscape, known
to the locals as The Walls of China
and to geomorphologists as a
‘lunette’.
This is the land formation built by
the west wind as it blasted sand and
silt across the lake and into the
dunes, there to keep working away
at it, constantly eroding, shifting
and sculpting it into new and
wonderful shapes.
Here Bowler found ancient
carbonate-encrusted shells
embedded in the dunes, high above
ABOVE: The transformation of Lake
Mungo, artwork by Myrawin Nelson.
Australian Heritage 41
the level of water that once filled
the ancient lake. He also found
chips of stone, some unmistakably
fashioned as tools. This was
evidence of human presence well
before 20,000 years ago.
Returning the following year,
Bowler made the astounding
discovery of a collection of burnt
bone fragments once embedded in
the dunes, but recently exposed by
erosion. Recognising their likely
antiquity, he sought the opinion of
archaeologists, John Mulvaney and
Rhys Jones. Excavation of the site
revealed the remains of a female
who had been cremated over 40,000
years ago – the oldest ritual
cremation found anywhere in the
world. The woman, whose bones
were collected and taken to the
Australian National University to
be studied and reassembled, was
named Mungo Lady.
Six years later, just a few hundred
metres from the site of her
cremation, erosion of the dunes by
the wind revealed yet another
human burial. This was Mungo
Man, who had been buried lying on
his side, his body ritually prepared
with ochre. Analysis of his bones
showed that Mungo Man was
around 50 years old when he died,
and that he suffered from
osteoarthritis in his right elbow –
probably the result of the constant
use of a spear-thrower or woomera.
The care with which Mungo Man
had been buried and the fact that
the ochre must have been brought
from over 100 km away suggested to
archeologists that he may have been
an important person in his tribe. It
also suggested that his people
believed in an afterlife, and that
they may have travelled over
substantial distances and engaged in
trade with other tribes.
Further excavations in the area
revealed a wealth of artefacts. Tools
were found that were dated to
40,000 years ago, including
sandstone grinders imported from
outside the Willandra Lakes area
that were probably used to grind
wild grass seeds. This may well be
evidence of one of the earliest
instances of the manufacture
of flour.
Since the original discoveries of
human remains, the bones of more
than 160 individuals have been
found in the Willandra Lakes
region. Some of these have been
collected and stored at the
Australian National University and
one is kept at the Mungo Visitors
Information Centre (not on
display). More than 50 have been
left in their original resting places.
Scientists still debate the antiquity
of these people, with their estimates
varying between 40,000 years and
60,000 years.
In 2004, the land revealed
another astonishing memento from
the past. On a dry lagoon to the
north of Lake Mungo, a footprint
was found, exposed by the shifting
sand. Subsequent excavation that
involved moving tons of sand as
well as using ground-penetrating
radar found it to be one of over 450
footprints made at least 20,000 years
ago when the lagoon had dried to
expose its muddy bed. The prints
were of both adults and children,
some walking together, others alone,
some running full stretch through
the magnesite mud as though in
pursuit of game. There is even a
track made by a one-legged person
(or someone who got about by
hopping).
For scientists studying early human
history, these are extraordinary finds
and have fuelled debate on some
fundamental questions.
Who were these people and how
did they come to live in this remote
region? How does their presence
here at that time fit with the
various theories of human evolution
and migration? These are questions
that are still core to the study of
human history and evolution.
For the people of the three tribes
associated with the Willandra
Lakes, the story that their ancestral
land is yielding has a very different
significance. Since the discovery of
Mungo Lady and Mungo Man,
many people of these tribes have
frequently returned to Lake Mungo
to reclaim their heritage and
rekindle their ancient spiritual
connection with the land. Many
have become deeply unhappy about
the disturbance of the landscape for
archaeological excavation and the
removal of bones from their place of
burial, and it is some years now
since scientists have had
unrestricted access to the area.
In 1979, the significance of
the finds at Lake Mungo was
recognised by the NSW
government when the 32,000
hectare Mungo pastoral station
was acquired and gazetted as a
national park. Later, in 1984, the
park was enlarged with inclusion of
the Zanci pastoral station, but in
the meantime a large section of the
Willandra Lakes area – some 3,600
square kilometres encompassing
seventeen lake beds – had been
inscribed on the World Heritage
List in recognition of both its
natural and cultural values.
By this time, some of the female
Elders of the three tribes had
recognised the importance of
working with the authorities to
achieve cooperative management of
their traditional land. A great deal
of consultation and negotiation
went into bringing the idea to
fruition, and today, the
Willandra Lakes Region World
Heritage Area, and within it
the Mungo National Park, is
jointly managed by the Elders’
Council formed by the Paakantji
and Ngyiampaa tribal groups in
cooperation with the NSW
National Parks and Wildlife
Service.
Through the Elders’ Council,
Aboriginal traditional owners play a
key role in managing and protecting
the fragile ecosystems and important
cultural sites of their landscape and
presenting them to visitors. The
Elders are custodians of the
traditional bond with country and
by training their young people as
Discovery Rangers they ensure the
continuation of this bond into
the future.
LEFT: A view north across the bed
of Lake Mungo from the water
scoured formations of the lunette,
with the curve of the lunette
continuing in the background.
RIGHT: The remains of an ancient
hearth lie exposed by the wind.
BELOW: The skeleton of Mungo
Man as excavated in 1974. Photo
courtesy Jim Bowler. Photo published by
permission of Tribal Elders.
Australian Heritage 43
Dusk on the lunette.
Lake Mungo Discovery Ranger,
Tanya Charles, whose late
grandmother, Alice Kelly, played a
leading role in achieving comanagement, explained why she
feels it is so important to allow the
land to tell its story.
“You need to understand what
Aboriginal people mean when they
talk about sacred sites. If some
remains are uncovered by the
weather, then that is a sacred site.
This is how the country is showing
44 Australian Heritage
the people something more of their
heritage. It becomes sacred because
it is a place that the country – the
spirits – have chosen to reveal.”
A visit to the lunette of Lake
Mungo very quickly makes Tanya’s
meaning perfectly clear. The strata
of sand and clay that so fascinated
Jim Bowler are constantly changing
as the wind does its work, and on no
two days does the landscape seem
exactly the same. Every day
something new has been exposed on
the surface – fragments of burnt
stone from a hearth, tiny otoliths
(calcium carbonate structures from
the ears of fish), fossilised animal
bones, stone tools and shards from
tool-making and, very occasionally,
human burials.
“The country will show you what
you want to see. We believe it is the
spirits that bring these things out to
prove who we are. Every time
something is found, it’s from our
dreamtime,” Tanya says.
That is not to say that the
traditional owners do not appreciate
the information that scientists have
provided. It is of great interest to
many to know of the eras when the
lakes were filled, when vegetation
covered the lunettes, and when the
climate became colder and the lakes
dried out.
Conservation of the precious
remnants from the past as they are
revealed in the lunettes is a difficult
issue. If they are left exposed to the
elements they very soon break down
and become part of the shifting
sands, so for some time there has
been a proposal for a keeping place
at Lake Mungo. This has not so far
eventuated, and to preserve
important finds, it has been
necessary to cover them over
with sand.
Another key issue for the
traditional owners is protection of
sites that do not fall within the
National Park. Although they may
be part of the World Heritage Area,
they do not have the same level of
protection and there are concerns
that as the remains from the lives of
the ancestors are revealed, they may
be destroyed or damaged before their
full meaning can be understood. In
some ways, for the tribal groups, the
quest to restore the bond with their
ancestors and with the dreamtime is
a timeless voyage, and yet time is of
the essence if the subtle messages
and knowledge from within the land
are to be heard and understood.
Our thanks to the 2TTG Elders’
Council for their permission to publish
this article.
LAND OF LAKES & DUNE FIELDS
BY JIM BOWLER
L
AKE MUNGO, a segment of the
Willandra Lakes World Heritage
area, is a dry basin located seemingly
miles from anywhere. But it is here,
in the midst of endless inland plains,
that a saga of environmental change
is concealed in a system of ancient
lakes, strung out in an
interconnected overflow chain along
the course of the now dry Willandra
Creek, an ancestral course of the
Lachlan River that rises in the
mountains of the south-east.
A central part of the the MurrayDarling Basin and now surrounded
by stable mallee dunes, the elliptical
depressions of the Willandra Lakes,
each with its characteristic lunette
ridge on the eastern perimeter,
provide windows into the history of
arid Australia. Like hundreds of
similar basins across southern
Australia, the Willandra Lakes
testify to times past when the land
was awash with surface water. The
remains of fish, mussel shells and
gravel beaches are the remnants of
ancient wetlands that existed even
where no surface water is found
today.
By contrast, the lakes also record
dry phases when woodland
vegetation contracted and bare soil
was transformed into fields of rolling
sand dunes. Active desert
environments engulfed the
Willandra, stretching far to the
south-east, even into north-eastern
Tasmania. Records of this huge
desert expansion are preserved in
the shoreline dunes of the Willandra
lakes, and Lake Mungo stands as the
iconic archive of such events.
This dramatic landscape reflects
ancient rhythms modulated by the
advance and retreat of ice in the
catchment areas of the
south-eastern Snowy
Mountains.
In a major wet phase about
120,000 years ago, the
landscape was fed by huge
river channels three or four
times as large as today’s
Murray River which
deposited the bright red
sediment that forms the core
of the Mungo lunette of
today. In geological terms we
designate this period the Golgol
phase of lunette construction.
Lacking any archaeological remains,
it defines the time before people,
the empty land before human
arrivals.
After a long dry phase, the lakes
filled again around 60,000 years ago,
the beginning of the Mungo Phase.
This was a dramatic time that saw
the arrival of the first Australians.
The landscape that greeted them
here nearly 50,000 years ago was
one of brimful lakes, abundant fish,
mussels and wildlife. It was also a
time when giant mammals, now
extinct, such as largest marsupial
Diprotodon, the giant kangaroo
Procoptodon, and the giant flightless
bird Genyornis, roamed the area.
ABOVE: The lower jaw of Zygomaturus, a cowsized marsupial that died out around 45,000
years ago, found in the Lake Mungo region.
BELOW: White clay deposits overlay a red band
reworked from the ancient Golgol sediments.
Mulurulu
Lake
WI
DR
AN
LL
EE
A CR K
To Pooncarie
Garnpung
Lake
Lake
Leaghur
Lake
Mungo
Mungo
National
Park
Lake
Arumpo
Chibnalwood
Lakes
ARU
MP
OC
Moonlight
Lake
Mallee Cliffs
National Park
World Heritage Area
REE
K
Protected Areas
Prungle
Lakes
Dry Lake Bed
Water Courses
Roads
Tracks
Map produced by Environment Australia
© Commonwealth of Australia 2003
Inscribed on the Wo rl d Heritage List in 1981
Willandra Lakes Region
Map courtesy NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
o Mildura
T
But nature was ever-changing. By 45,000
years ago, the period of abundant water
with overflowing lakes had begun to
change. Clouds of dust from droughtaffected lands left their signatures in
lakeshore sediments.
By 41,000 years ago, around the time
when Mungo Man and Mungo Lady died,
the lakes had begun to dry. In several short
dry phases, strong winds had blasted clouds
of dust from the dry lake floor mantling
the beaches with layers of grey clay.
Mungo Man was buried in such material.
For a long period the lake levels
oscillated sometimes wet, sometimes dry.
Termed the Arumpo Phase, the climate
was getting progressively colder. Human
occupation continued throughout this
time, the people adjusting to periodic
episodes of droughts and floods.
Approaching the maximum glaciation
period 20,000 years ago, drastic and
widespread changes set in. In highland
areas, ice extended over Mount Kosciuszko
and over north-western Tasmania. The sea
level fell more than 120 metres, joining
Tasmania to mainland Australia. Defined
in the Willandra area as the Zanci Phase,
huge dust clouds from active dunes in the
west descended on Lake Mungo. From the
dry lake floor, additional dust clouds
deposited layer upon layer of grey clays,
mantling the growing lunette ridge. Dust
and salt from the Willandra Lakes
travelled east to Canberra and beyond.
Erosion has uncovered an ancient red Golgol dune
remnant from around 120,000 years ago, now
overlain by the younger grey sandy clays of the last
major dune-building age (40–20,000 years ago).
Tanya Charles and Junette Mitchell examine the footprints left by their ancestors more than 20,000 years ago. Photo by Michael Amendolia.
Throughout the Murray Basin, lowlying areas became poisoned by salt.
Plants, animals and people sought
new refuges. The rivers became
lifeline arteries of fresh water
draining from the southern
highlands. Although far from the
highlands, the Mungo record
provides stark testimony of just how
arid things really were during that
cold period of maximum ice.
Following the warming after
15,000 years ago, associated with the
retreat of ice and rise in sea level,
and after some minor oscillations
(the Mulurulu wet phase), the
Willandra Lakes took on the
appearance that greeted European
settlers in the 1860s.
Erosion of the Lake Mungo lunette
cut deeply into its interior creating
today’s ‘moon-like’ landscape.
Although we normally regard
erosion as a great problem, nature
here has worked to our advantage by
exposing the internal anatomy of
the dune. In so doing, secrets of
both the lunette’s construction and
the lives and deaths of its earliest
inhabitants have been revealed.
In this way, Lake Mungo provides
a key to the wider understanding of
how inland Australia, far removed
from the direct influence of ice,
responded to changes of cold, dry
Ice Age times. It reminds us of the
harsh conditions to which
indigenous Australians had to adjust
as waterholes dried, food resources
disappeared and cold, dry winds
swept across the land. In that sense,
it helps unlock the story of the
people-land interaction in this
strange and complex land. It also
challenges us today to imagine how
we and our descendants will respond
to the huge changes in climate,
especially changes of water
availability in the decades that lie
ahead. Will the fossil lakes ever
fill again?
In a special way, the Willandra
Lakes are not only the key to recent
Ice Age environments. There is an
additional irony in that their very
location is controlled by events of a
much earlier Ice Age some six
million years ago. Before that time,
Heritage
Touring
Mungo National Park is 110 km
to the north-east of Mildura/
Buronga. Roads into and around
the park are unsealed and visitors
should check on access before
setting out. Guided tours are
provided by Aboriginal Discovery
Rangers. Accommodation is
available in the refurbished
shearers’ quarters.
More information on 03 5021
8900.
sea levels had flooded the Murray
Basin, and the shoreline extended to
the northern part of today’s World
Heritage area. As the Ice Age
progressed and the Antarctic ice cap
expanded, sea levels fell and the
shoreline retreated south towards
the present coast. Left behind was a
legacy of amazing arcuate ridges, a
rhythmic succession of ancient
coastlines reflecting the growth of
Antarctic ice causing the fall in sea
level from six million years to
present day.
The Willandra Lake basins lie in
depressions between coastal ridges.
Near the western margin of Lake
Mungo, beach sands of the
retreating sea, later cemented into
hard crystalline rock, are now
exposed and provide the very source
of stone that the Willandra people
so skillfully exploited for tools
millions of years later. Thus, the
Willandra Lakes provide a
concluding chapter in the long
history of the Murray Basin’s
evolution. As host to the remarkable
story of the first Australians, they
also provide that continuity linking
environmental change with the
descendants of the Mungo people,
the traditional owners of the
Willandra Lakes today.
The Author
Professor Jim Bowler is Honorary
Professorial Fellow in Earth Sciences
at the University of Melbourne. ◆
Australian Heritage 47