Messages
from
Mungo
Past paces. Hundreds
of 20,000-year-old fossil
footprints were discovered
near Mungo in 2004.
Forty years ago the remains
of a man were found at Lake
Mungo in NSW. This discovery
would forever change our
understanding of the Aboriginal
history of Australia.
Story by John Pickrell
Photography by Michael Amendolia
50 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c
May –Ju n e 2 0 1 4
51
I
but all around me shift the sands
of time. I am sitting on a dune 50m above the saltbush
plains at Mungo National Park, in south-western NSW.
A cool breeze carries with it fine grains of silica, and the
soft glow of first light is beginning to illuminate a series
of emu tracks that trail past me and disappear over the crest of
the dune. Just a little while earlier, the Milky Way had been a
clear streak across the sky, and Venus, Mars and Saturn were all
bright points of light. There was even the brief and exciting flare
of a shooting star – a distant traveller met with a fiery demise.
Aboriginal people have camped here on this very dune and
on others like it in the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage
Area (WHA) for more than 50 millennia, beginning long before
modern humans had even arrived in Western Europe. On countless occasions, they have looked out at the rising sun and seen
the same night sky awash with twinkling stars. Beneath me in
the dune are their stone tools, the baked hearths of their cooking
fires, and their carefully buried or cremated human remains.
Here, perhaps more than anywhere else in Australia, you
can feel a connection to the first people who arrived more than
60,000 years ago. They were at the front of a wave of migration
that carried small bands of travellers on an almost implausible
journey, by foot and over many generations, from Africa and
along the coasts of Asia. Eventually – via an ocean crossing from
Indonesia that was shorter than it would be today due to lower
sea levels – they made their way to northern Australia.
The first occupation sites in Australia are below today’s sea
T’S ALMOST SILENT,
52 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c
level, so we’re unlikely to ever find traces of them.
Perhaps the earliest evidence of these migrants is a
rock shelter, known as Malakunanja II, located about
50km inland from the Arnhem Land coast. Here,
alongside rock art, the remains of stone tools, grinding stones, ochre and charcoal have been found, the
oldest of which are about 55,000 years old.
The next evidence we have of people living in
Australia comes from Mungo National Park and the
wider Willandra Lakes area – and here it is abundant.
In geological layers dated as far back as 50,000 years,
there are stone tools and hearths, shellfish middens
and butchered animal bones.
Australia’s Aboriginal people have the oldest continuous culture on the planet and today we take its
great antiquity for granted, but this wasn’t always so.
When now-retired professor Jim Bowler stumbled
upon the cremated remains that came to be known as
Mungo Lady, in 1969, it suggested Aboriginal people
had been here far longer than scientists suspected.
But it was his 1974 discovery of Mungo Man that
really startled the world.
I
Jim was working as a geologist with
the Australian National University (ANU), in
Canberra, looking at rocks in the south-western
corner of NSW to find clues about ancient climate
N 1974
JIM BOWLER; PUBLISHED WITH PERMISSION OF TRADITIONAL OWNERS
Resting place. Willandra Aboriginal elders
(L–R) Maryann Marton, Peggy Smith, Joan
Slade and Roy Kennedy at the secret site where
Mungo Man (opposite) was found in 1974.
Unexpected find. Australian National
University archaeologists Anthea Carstairs
and Dr Wilfred Shawcross help excavate
Mungo Man in 1974. His are among the
world’s oldest modern human remains.
November–December 2014
53
Inland explorer. Dr Jim Bowler
found the remains of both
Mungo Lady and Mungo Man.
WATCH Use the free
viewa app to scan this
page and see a film
about Mungo Man, or
find it on our website.
Beguiling beauty. The collapse of
the ‘lunettes’ or dunes at Willandra
– caused by grazing from rabbits
and sheep – has created structures
such as the Walls of China.
54 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c
did Jim realise that this would be a historic day. “I
hunted along in the same area as Mungo Lady. In
that part of the landscape, when you get your eye in,
you can follow a particular geological horizon – it’s
like a geological map, with layers that are 20, 30, 40
thousand years old,” he says.
Less than half a kilometre from where Mungo Lady
was found, he stopped dead in his tracks. “I spotted
the tip of a white bone. I brushed away and it was
clearly a skull…and I brushed away a bit further and
the mandible was attached. And I thought, ‘Holy shit!
This is the companion to Mungo Lady.’ I raced to the
nearest shearing station and got on the telephone to
Canberra… I thought, ‘I’m not going to touch this;
this is a specialist job.’”
It was another day before archaeological heavyweight Professor Alan Thorne arrived from ANU
with a truckload of assistants and the excavation
began. They had only to strip off 10–15cm of topsoil. Rarely are excavations this simple. A deeper
trench was dug to reveal sediments above and below
the skeleton, which could later be used to help date
it. It wasn’t until much later (and after significant
These were among the
world’s earliest recorded
funerary rites.
GARY HAYES
change; he wasn’t an archaeologist and he hadn’t set out to find
human remains. “I wanted to unwrap the story of the climatic
legacy written in the Australian landscape,” Jim tells me when
I meet him at Mungo on a warm autumn day, the air thick with
flies. “My agenda was to explore the…dry inland country, the
dune systems and salt lakes. I was reconstructing the impact of
Ice Age climatic change.”
Few people had explored the now-dry ancient lakebeds that
spanned the sheep stations in this remote spot. Jim was mapping
them for the first time. “I was able to identify the shorelines of
the lakes, and in them, find stone tools and shells and evidence
of human remains. That completely changed the importance of
the system,” says Jim, now in his 80s and living in Melbourne.
Here, five years earlier, he had found Mungo Lady –
hundreds of fragments of bone, now known to be the world’s
earliest recorded cremation. Although the true age of this find
was not realised until later, it was clear it was a globally significant
discovery. At this time, scientists believed Aboriginal people had
arrived in Australia some 15–20,000 years ago, but this figure
was about to be corrected dramatically.
In 1974 prolonged rain confined Jim to the shearers’ quarters
at Mungo station. On 26 February the conditions improved
and he was excited as heavy rains expose new artefacts. Little
scientific debate) that a series of studies confirmed
that both Mungo Man and Mungo Lady were about
40–42,000 years old, but Jim’s knowledge of geological layers already told him the remains were older
than any others in Australia.
As the excavations proceeded, the researchers
found red pellets and staining in the grave. It began
to dawn on Jim that this was a kind of ochre used as
body paint by Aboriginal people today. “There’s no
ochre for miles around here – you have to transport
it in. Then you have the ritual of grinding the ochre.
There was a fire alongside the burial…so perhaps a
smoking ceremony. The ochre was ground up and
painted or sprinkled on. Either way, it demonstrates
this community around him was in mourning. It’s the sort of
ceremony and ritual that does justice to any church service today.”
These were among the world’s earliest recorded funerary rites.
The bones of both Mungo Lady and Mungo Man, as well as
the fragmentary remains of as many as 100 other people found
at Willandra, made their way into ANU collections in Canberra
during the 1970s and ’80s. The NSW State Government purchased Mungo station and turned it into a national park in 1979
(funds from Australian Geographic’s founder Dick Smith helped
establish the visitors centre, which includes a small museum).
Gazetting of the larger WHA followed in 1981. However, unease
and resentment would grow in the following years because the
remains were removed from Willandra without consultation
with people from the area’s three Aboriginal groups, the Paakantyi (also spelled Barkandji), Ngiyampaa and Mutthi Mutthi.
T
HE WILLANDRA LAKES Region
World Heritage Area
covers 2400sq.km of semi-arid saltbush plains, dunes
and sparse woodlands in the Murray Basin of south-western NSW. It consists of 19 dry relict lakes (see map, overleaf )
that were once filled with glacial meltwater flowing east along
the Willandra Creek from the Great Dividing Range. These
Pleistocene-era lakes, which were full from about 50,000 years
November–December 2014
55
Fossil fragment.
Archaeologist Harvey
Johnston examines
eggshell from extinct
giant bird Genyornis.
M U N G O N AT I O N A L PA R K A N D T H E W I L L A N D R A L A K E S R E G I O N
DIRECTORY
ANCIENT LAND
Despite being far inland, the landscape here is just
60–100m above sea level. It was once home to a
great system of lakes fed by glacial meltwater. Today
the lakes are dry saltbush plains; surrounding dunes
have spectacular features such as the Walls of China.
GETTING THERE
Mungo is 110km north-east of Mildura and 165km
north-west of Balranald via Box Creek Road.
WHERE TO STAY
You can camp just inside the entrance at Main Camp
or at the more remote Belah Camp. There’s also basic
accommodation at the Shearers Quarters and just
outside the park is the four-star Mungo Lodge.
MORE INFORMATION
56 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c
POINTS OF INTEREST
1 Zanci Homestead
2 Visitor centre
3 Mungo Woolshed
4 Mungo Lodge
5 Walls of China
6 Belah Camp
WILLANDRA MEGAFAUNA
Procoptodon goliah
ILLUSTRATIONS: PETER TRUSLER
ago, vary in size from 6 to 350sq.km; all have crescent-moonshaped dunes called lunettes on their eastern sides, formed by
prevailing winds. Mungo NP itself covers about 70 per cent of
Lake Mungo, including the striking Walls of China, which are
part of the lake’s 26km-long lunette.
As the last last ice age (which ran from about 110,000 to
about 12,000 years ago) waned, the glacial ice dwindled and
water no longer flowed from the highlands to replenish the
lakes, the last of which dried up 17,500 years ago. Despite their
age, the flat expanses of the lake floors and the dune systems
that surrounded them are still obvious today.
While the lakes were full, the lush wetland system teemed
with life. People would have camped along the shores, hunting
and foraging for freshwater mussels, yabbies, golden perch and
Murray cod, as well as emus, kangaroos and other large species.
The fossils of more than 55 animals have been found in the
lunettes – snakes and wombats, but also extinct species such as
Procoptodon and Genyornis (see box, right). Alongside the animal
fossils are stone tools and ancient fireplaces that reveal extensive
human occupation. Most significant, though, are the human
remains scattered throughout the eroding dunes.
“Some of the very earliest modern human remains in the world
are here at Mungo,” says Harvey Johnston, a NSW Office of
Environment and Heritage archaeologist, who’s been involved
with Willandra since the late 1980s. “You have this record of
human occupation going back 40,000 years and burials and
ceremonies associated with that: cremations, burials with ochre,
multiple individuals and burials with unusual features.”
www.visitmungo.com.au
www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/Mungo-National-Park
www.mungolodge.com.au
This ‘short-faced’ kangaroo
was more than 2m tall and
weighed up to 200kg. It
had long arms and claws for
reaching vegetation in trees.
It survived in parts of Australia until 30,000 years ago.
Genyornis newtoni
A giant flightless ‘thunderbird’,
common until about 45,000
years ago. Often mistaken for a
relative of the emu, this 2m-tall,
240kg bird was really a giant
duck or goose. Pieces of eggshell are common at Willandra.
November–December 2014
57
the rise and fall of a lunette
History repeating. The eroding Willandra Lakes lunettes are littered with fossils
and archaeological artefacts such as this skeleton from a locally extinct northern
hairy-nosed wombat (below), as well as (right, from top) Genyornis eggshell,
Aboriginal stone tools and the baked remains of fireplaces up to 50,000 years old.
In drier times sand and dust from the lakes’ floors was blown to the eastern shorelines to form
crescent-moon-shaped dunes called lunettes. They are now eroding away, unveiling history as they go.
45,000 YEARS AGO. The lake is full and
life is abundant. Marsupial megafauna such
as Zygomaturus (a semi-aquatic, hippo-like
wombat relative) live around the shoreline
and are hunted by some of the first people
here. A westerly wind (arrows) blows sand
from the beach into eastern shore dunes.
35,000 YEARS AGO. The water level is
slightly lower. Sand and dust from across
the plains blows into the dunes. Life is still
abundant and people commonly live on the
dunes to take advantage of the riches. The
megafauna are gone but evidence of them
and people becomes fossilised in the dunes.
20,000 YEARS AGO. The climate is changing and the lakes – which will soon no
longer be replenished – are starting to dry.
People have to hunt and gather over larger
areas to survive. Footprints left by some of
these people in the muddy foreshores of
the dwindling lakes become fossilised.
“I
think this place was a freshwater
lake filled with fish and mussels and people fishing –
and it just dried up. Nature has its own way of doing
things,” says Mutthi Mutthi elder Mary Pappin. Mary is one of a
number of passionate and outspoken Aboriginal women who’ve
pushed hard for the rights of their people here. Her late mother,
T’S INCREDIBLE TO
58 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c
Alice Kelly (see AG 44), led the fight to have Mungo
Lady returned to the park in the 1990s (the remains
have since been kept in a locked vault on site).
“Every time I’m out there I know I’m walking with
my mob. With my elders, my past and my present,”
Mary says. “It’s just something that you feel and it
makes you proud to know you belong to a race of
people that survived in a landscape for many thousands of years without destroying it.”
Along with the Paakantyi and the Ngiyampaa,
the Mutthi Mutthi are custodians of Willandra
today. Mutthi Mutthi country lies east and south
of Willandra; it encompasses sections of the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Lachlan rivers. Paakantyi
land stretches north from the Victoria border, to
Broken Hill and Wilcannia. It includes sections of the
Darling River and its tributaries. The Ngiyampaa once inhabited the plains and hills east of the
Darling River and north of Willandra Creek. People
of these three groups now live largely in local towns
such as Ivanhoe, Pooncarie, Mildura, Balranald, Hay
and Wilcannia.
The issues surrounding the unearthing and
ILLUSTRATIONS: MICHAEL PAYNE; REFERENCE NSW PARKS AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
A number of other scientifically significant remains have
been discovered at Willandra but never disturbed or studied, in
line with the wishes of the area’s Aboriginal custodians. ‘Mungo
Child’, as it has become known to scientists, was discovered in
1987 and may be of similar antiquity to Mungo Man. “There are
no other juvenile skeletons in this 40,000-year age range in the
entire Australian and Asian region,” says Dr Michael Westaway,
from Griffith University, in Brisbane. “The remains of Homo
sapiens of this antiquity are very, very rare globally.”
When the top of the juvenile skull was discovered, just a few
centimetres of sand were brushed off it before it was reburied.
“It was never fully excavated,” Harvey says. “Some years later,
part of the mandible [jaw] became exposed through natural erosion, and confirmed it was clearly an adolescent or child.” Since
the mid 1980s, park rangers swiftly rebury any exposed human
remains, often covering them with shadecloth to retard erosion.
10,000 YEARS AGO. Conditions change
from lush to arid depending on rainfall. The
lakes are no more, but people continue
to live on the dunes seasonally as hunting
conditions permit. Stone tools, human and
animal remains and the baked hearths of
fireplaces are still preserved in the dunes.
150 YEARS AGO. European colonists arrive
and Aboriginal people are moved off their
land. Up to 50,000 sheep and countless
rabbits destroy the vegetation on the dunes,
causing them to erode away more rapidly.
This creates the Walls of China and unveils
fossils tens of thousands of years old.
TODAY. Erosion slows with the formation
of the national park and vegetation starts to
return to the dunes. The lake floor habitat
stabilises. Sheep have gone, but rabbits cannot be totally eradicated from the dunes.
Important fossils continue to be found, but
human remains are now left undisturbed.
November–December 2014
59
scientific study of human remains at Willandra are
complex and sensitive. The Aboriginal community
feels they have an unbroken connection with the
people buried here and a responsibility to see their
spirits left in peace. “These are relatives. These are
ancestors,” Harvey says. “The people are associated
with these remains in a very strong way. That’s very
critical to the whole equation.”
Ngiyampaa elder Roy Kennedy says his people
are unhappy about what happened here in the ’70s
and ’80s. “They just come in and dug them out of
the ground, took them to Canberra without any consultation. That in my book is wrong,” he says. “It’s
alright for white blokes to come out here and dig
up Aboriginal people, throw them in a box and take
them down to Canberra and scan them, rescan them,
turn them over and put them back in their box. But
if we tried that – went into a white fella cemetery
and done that – we’d have been shot.”
Paakantyi man Ricky Mitchell is a community project coordinator with the Willandra Lakes
Region WHA. He says the remains at ANU are
“crying to come home to country. The country where
they’re held, it’s not their country. They want to come
back out here and then they’ll rest.”
In the 1970s, when Mungo Man’s remains were
estimated at 40,000 years old, this was startling for
many, though perhaps not for Aboriginal Australians,
who’d always known from their Dreamtime narratives that their ancestors had been here a long time.
It was modern science confirming what Aboriginal
people knew all along, says Harvey. Nevertheless, the
discovery was profoundly significant and its implications still reverberate today. The phrase “40,000
years” was quickly adopted by land rights campaigners and became a tremendously powerful political
statement used to reinforce messages of Aboriginal
heritage, history and ownership.
Mary Pappin believes the bones returned to the
surface for a purpose. As she said to Jim Bowler: “You
didn’t find Mungo Lady and Mungo Man – they
found you. Because they had a story to tell even after
45,000 years. They wanted to let white Australia
know that the Aboriginal people had been here for
a long time and they are still here.”
Tales in Print
World’s largest collection
of footprints provides a
snapshot of Ice Age life.
I
N AUGUST 2003, a young Mutthi Mutthi
woman, Mary Pappin jnr, was walking
across clay pans near Garnpung Lake
during a survey when she saw something
puzzling. “We were just about to finish
up for the day and…I spotted a print on
the ground,” Mary later recounted to the
ABC. She called out to Dr Steve Webb, an
archaeologist at Bond University and part
of the survey group accompanying her.
What Mary had found was remarkable.
It was the first of 530, 20,000-year-old
human footprints hidden beneath a shallow layer of sand. These were the oldest
human footprints found in Australia and
the largest collection of Ice Age prints
in the world. There were so many prints
that they doubled the number of known
fossilised human footprints worldwide.
Later study – and insights from Pintupi
trackers invited from the Central Deserts
to help – revealed the footprints had been
made by men, women and children in 26
separate trackways left in the mud of a
lake shore. They were left in a kind of clay
including magnesium and calcium carbonate, which sets as hard as concrete.
A series of tracks feature deep impressions left by large feet, suggesting men in
a hunting party, running. A groove reveals
where a spear missed its target. Incredibly,
one set of tracks has only right and no left
prints, which the Pintupi believe indicates a
one-legged man running unaided.
According to Steve, another part of the
tracks features a possible family group with
a number of children aged between six
and nine. One of the children appears to
wander off aimlessly, before being called
back to the group. These trackways offer a
rare window into Ice Age life.
60 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c
O
N 25 FEBRUARY 2014, almost 40 years to the
Looking back. Aboriginal elders (L-R)
Mary Pappin snr, Junette Mitchell,
Beryl and Roy Kennedy, Joan Slade
and Lottie Williams, exploring the
footsteps of their ancestors in 2004;
tracks are shown in close-up above.
day since his extraordinary find, Jim made an
impassioned plea in a number of newspapers
for Mungo Man to finally be returned to Willandra.
Jim argues that the bones have yielded all they can
to research and that the NSW State Government
and ANU should fast-track their return. “Keeping
him in a cardboard box for 40 years is long enough.
It doesn’t mean that’s the end of scientific research
by any means, but it’s time for him to come home
25,000 ya
SIBERIA
40,000 ya
WESTERN EUROPE
MIDDLE
EAST
100,000 ya
NORTH
AMERICA
ASIA
12,000 ya
70,000 ya
AFRICA
POLYNESIA
30,000 ya
SOUTH
AMERICA
AUSTRALIA
60,000 ya
1,500 ya
NEW ZEALAND
11,000 ya
A global odyssey. The human remains found at the Willandra
Lakes are part of the story of how our species spread out from Africa
100,000 years ago (ya) to colonise the world. Their discovery revealed
that the ancestors of Aboriginal people arrived here long before
humans arrived in Western Europe, the Americas and the Pacific.
to his country. I won’t be here in another 10 years, and I feel a
sense of responsibility.”
For many years, plans have been discussed for a mausoleum
or crypt to be built to house the remains. This subterranean
‘Keeping Place’ would see Mungo Man, Mungo Lady and the
others returned to the ground, but it would also comprise a
research facility so study could continue. A new visitor centre
would be incorporated above ground. Designs have already been
outlined by leading Australian architects Gregory Burgess and
Glenn Murcutt. However, funding to realise this vision has yet to
materialise, and support is growing from some in the community
for the bones to simply be returned to the ground as repatriated
remains have been in other parts of Australia.
“There are ongoing discussions that are complex both in
terms of cultural agreement and the architecture of the physical
construction,” Jim says. Robyn Parker, former NSW minister
for the environment, told reporters in February: “While we are
committed to the repatriation as soon as possible, the decision
as to what will occur with the ancestral remains rests with the
traditional owners…and those discussions are continuing.”
Harvey says that although, in principle, there would be
no objection from ANU if the traditional owners turned up
tomorrow to collect the remains, many questions are still to
be answered – such as how they will be returned, whether the
100 or so other sets of human remains at ANU will also be
returned, and if the remains will be made accessible to scientists.
These questions are currently being considered by Paakantyi,
Ngiyampaa and Mutthi Mutthi elders, who are yet to decide
when and how the remains will be returned.
Michael Westaway is among few experts who’ve completed
a detailed analysis of the wider collection of Willandra remains,
and, over the years, has had support from elders for most of the
research he has asked to do. He agrees the remains should be
returned, but not that research has been exhausted. “There’s new
technology, such as protein sequencing of DNA. While other
ancient DNA techniques have failed, this might actually work,”
he says. “We’ve got these fantastic new tools and even though
November–December 2014
61
Visitor attractions. Palaeontologist Dr Michael Westaway (right) takes
participants in the 2014 Mungo Youth Conference for a tour, examining fossils as
they go. The national park still has historic buildings such as the woolshed (below),
where up to 18 shearers at a time once toiled to shear 50,000 sheep in a year.
As the Ice Age waxed and
waned, and waters came and
went, they adapted and thrived.
the fossils are fragmentary, they can still tell us a great deal.”
Working with Professors David Lambert at Griffith
University and Eske Willerslev at the University of Copenhagen,
in Denmark, Michael has attempted to sequence DNA from
Mungo Man, and plans to compare it with the DNA of living
members of the three tribal groups. The results will be published
in coming months. He says he’s hoping for more time to use new
ANU facilities before the remains are returned. Then, with luck,
if they end up in a Keeping Place at Mungo, researchers would
still have access, but the elders would have more control. “The
fossils will be back in the landscape…and hopefully from that there
will be more willingness on the part of the elders for research.”
F
years ago, people at Willandra
lived a relatively easy life. Game was abundant and fish
were easy to catch. Aged about 50, the man whose remains
came to be buried in the Mungo lunette was coming to the end
of his life. He had watched his final sunrise and sunset over the
dune. Four decades of throwing spears had given him an arthritic
elbow, and on his last night, he sat by the fire rubbing it for the
last time. His teeth were similarly worn from a lifetime stripping
water reeds to make twine.
Ritual was important to his people, and in his youth his canine
teeth had been knocked out in an initiation ceremony. After he
ORTY-TWO-THOUSAND
62 A u s t r a l i a n G e o g r a p h i c
died that night, ritual played its part when his family
gathered in mourning to bury him in the dune. As
pungent smoke from smouldering branches of emu
bush filled the air, they placed him on his back, hands
crossed in his lap, and sprinkled him with precious red
ochre. Much of this we know from clues in his grave.
For the next 40 millennia, Mungo Man’s people
found a way to survive by sustainably managing the
landscape. As the Ice Age waxed and waned, and
waters came and went, they adapted and thrived.
Many years and countless generations later, Mary
Pappin thinks back to the lives of her ancestors. She
points out that Europeans have been here for just
200 years, less than 1 per cent of that time, yet have
already wrought irreparable damage. You can see this
on a small scale at Mungo, in the way grazing pressure
has caused the dunes to collapse.
“Aboriginal people have an intense commitment
to country even today. Europeans have lost that connection. Country to us is something you dig up and
export to China,” Jim says. “Mungo Man’s return
now is essential, because it’s only when he comes back
to his country that his message will really come to
life and be heard across Australia. That message is
about what have we done to his land and what have
we done to his people.” AG
When AG went to press in October a meeting of the Three
Traditional Tribal Groups Elders Council was planned, but there
was still no clear timeline for the repatriation of Mungo Man.
FIND more images of Mungo National Park online at:
www.australiangeographic.com.au/issue123
Waiting game. Ricky Mitchell,
a Paakantyi man of the Paarantji
subtribe, says Mungo Man is
“crying to come home to country”.
November–December 2014
63