Print   Close

Mungo National Park
Australian Aboriginal cultural and heritage preserve

By Anna Cook, Director, Meridian Tours

Outside of Antarctica, Australia is the oldest, driest and most climatically hostile continent on earth. That’s why there can be few more evocative experiences than a visit to Mungo National Park in western New South Wales, in the center of the Willandra Lakes region. Mungo, declared a World Heritage Site in 1981, is renowned for its spectacular “moonscape” scenery and its importance as an Aboriginal heritage site: Humans have continuously occupied this region for 45,000 years. 

Over the years winds, searing sun and droughts at Mungo desiccated what was once a lush rainforest, leaving essentially a fossil landscape, largely unmodified since the end of the Pleistocene ice age over 1 million years ago. The scalping winds have etched deeply into layers that silently preserved everything under it, including rich stores of Aboriginal artifacts: campsites, food plants, stone tools, animal bones and ancient burial sites. It here in 1969 that a momentous archeological discovery forever changed Aboriginal history.

The Landscape and Ecology

The region gradually transformed over hundreds of thousands of years from a rainforest with flowing rivers, fish-filled lakes and abundant groves of casuarina trees into to the dry semi-desert that it is today.  

Avian fauna now living in the park in the park includes emus, pink cockatoos, mulga parrots, honeyeaters and crested bell birds. Ground animals include red and gray kangaroos, geckos, lizards and small mammals. 

Geological formations include The Walls of China, a spectacular sight comprised of crescent-shaped dunes of vibrant orange and white colored sands. Winds shaped the landmark by blowing sands to a height of 30 meters (100 feet) above the plain. The fossil sand dunes run 30 kilometers (18 miles) along it. 

Two hundred years ago, white settlers began grazing sheep and cattle in the region, forcing the local Aboriginal tribes off the land. The area, which became known as the “Pastoral Loop,” today has one remaining “footprint” of an early ranch, an old wool shed built in 1868 that’s still standing and perfectly intact. It’s a fine example of bush architecture that has aged gracefully with time. 

Aboriginal Cultural Heritage 

But it is the Aborigines that fascinate visitors here. Mungo is the ancestral land of the Barkindi, Mutthi Mutthi and Nyiampaa tribes, and the area is rich with their ancient burial sites, artifacts, middens and campsites. Several well-preserved fossils of giant marsupials once found here can be seen at the Visitor’s Center. 

At “The Stone Quarry” are the remains of Aboriginal stone artifacts, such as axes, spear heads and grindstones. The grindstones are archeologically significant because they show that the   Aborigines were the first people to use the technique of crushing seeds to produce flour.

In 1969 one of the most momentous events in archaeological history took place at Lake Mungo when geologist Professor Jim Bowler, walking along a dried-up lake bed, saw something protruding from the sand. Careful excavation revealed a female human skeleton, perfectly intact,  that had been preserved under layers of sediment for hundreds of centuries: Carbon dating showed the skeleton’s to be 45,000 years old – astounding proof of the longevity of humans in Australia. In 1974 a second skeleton of similar age, a male, was also discovered. 

The pair, now known “Mungo Man” and “Mungo Woman,” forever changed scientists’ notions of Aboriginal history. Prior to the skeletons’ discovery, it was thought that Aborigines had inhabited Australia for only 8,000 years. But now, scientists realized, for Aborigines to have arrived in northern of Australia across land bridges from Asia, and then slowly populate the vast continent (Australia stretches 4,000 kilometers [2,500 miles] from east to west), the first tribes had to have migrated to Australia as early as 60,000 years ago.

To do so, they would have had to have crossed from Asia by boat or raft over 100 kilometers (60 miles) of open sea. And they did so in sufficient numbers tens of thousands of years before any other humans undertook a long sea voyage.

The discoveries also established that Aborigines were possibly the earliest homo sapiens to ritualize death and bury their dead.

Social Culture

Ancient campsites at Mungo National Park have been discovered under layers of sediment, revealing mounds of shell middens. The reason for the middens is not precisely known, but scientists theorize they were a practical method of confining refuse to one area rather than littering the landscape. Fossil garbage from the middens prove that the region was once a wetland, a rich habitat of shellfish.

Aborigines lived as nomads, camping at a particular site as long as there was enough food nearby. They did not over-hunt and would move when sources of ready food were becoming depleted. Tribes tended to roam over large regions, often taking years to return a favorite food source. This practice allowed the places where they hunted and foraged sufficient time to regenerate.

That the Aborigines lived and worked as a hunter-gatherer co-operatives is well documented, and it’s thought by some that they did so much earlier than other tribes on the planet. Their  hunters used spears, tipped with stone points, clubs and boomerangs to kill large and small animals. They used nets fish and fowl, weaving them reeds or grass to create traps held by sticks they pushed into the water. 

The women would search the ground with digging sticks for small animals in burrows and edible berries, eaten whole or ground into flour. They’d return to camp in the early afternoon, having gathered firewood during their foraging, which they would use to set up campfires in preparation for cooking the men’s catches of the day.

At their campsites, Aborigines constructed simple huts, called mia-mias, using stone hatchets to remove sheets of bark from trees. They would place these on the ground and prop them up, using large branches, creating sufficient space underneath for family members to sit or sleep. 

Aboriginal Dreamtime and The Land

To understand Aboriginal culture and the importance of its high regard of the land, you have to understand to understand “The Dreamtime.” While non-aboriginals can never be privileged to delve into the secret origins and rituals of The Dreamtime, they can understand philosophically and spiritually that The Dreamtime is the Aborigines’ grand story of creation and their place in it. The Dreamtime was the beginning of knowledge, from which came the laws of existence. For survival, these laws had to be strictly observed.

Before creation, the earth was a flat surface and dark. Beneath its surface, unknown forms of life, ancestor beings, were asleep. When creation began, they broke through the crust of the earth with a tumultuous force. The sun rose out of the ground with them, bringing light to the land for the first time.

These supernatural beings, or Totemic Ancestors, resembled creatures or plants and were half human. They moved across the barren surface of the world. They traveled hunted and fought, and changed the form of the land. In their journeys, they created the landscape – the mountains, the rivers, the trees, waterholes, plains and sand hills. They created the Aboriginal people, who are their descendants. They made the Ant, Grasshopper, Emu, Eagle, Crow, Parrot, Wallaby, Kangaroo, Lizard, Snake and all food plants.

They made the natural elements: Water, Air, Fire. They made all the celestial bodies: the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. Then, wearied from all their activity, the mythical creatures sank back into the earth and returned to their state of sleep.

Sometimes their spirits turned into rocks or trees, or a part of the landscape. These became sacred places, to be seen only by initiated men. 

Aborigines Today

Aboriginal tribes no longer inhabit Mungo National Park. They live in small townships nearby  locally employed or living on government grants.

How to Get There:

Fly from Melbourne, Victoria or Sydney to Mildura, Western Victoria. Drive 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the park. You can rent a car or hire a private vehicle with a tour operator escort.  

Best Experiences:

The Walls of China high dunes of vibrant orange and white sands 30 meters (100 feet).  At sunset, the view and the silence are an ultimate experience!

Star Gazing

Because Mungo Park is 100 kilometers from the nearest town, the air is pristine. The night sky is luminous, with stars creating a breathtaking vista. 

Heritage Value

While Mungo National Park preserves Aboriginal ancestral homeland, artifacts and ancient burial sites, it constitutes only about 10% of the 240,000-hectare (97,000-acre) World Heritage Site. The remainder is pastureland regrettably not governed by conservation agreements.