B&W (T) Mungo National Park. Balranald, New South Wales, Australia
By Black Bunny on 20-Aug-10. Waypoint GA2261

Burke and Wills (Traditional): Mungo National Park.

Burke and Wills:

Burke and Wills passed through here on their way north.

Glancing about him at his fellow explorers, John King alone would return this way alive. The Irishman, 22, served in the British army and was in Peshawar in 1854 during the Indian mutiny. He met Landells there while convalescing from a fever and came with him and the camels to Australia. His salary as a member of the expedition was £120 a year, and he was rewarded afterward with a lifetime pension, but he died of tuberculosis in 1872, still just aged 34.

About this location:

Balranald bills itself as "the gateway to Mungo National Park", which was Australia's first national park to be named a World Heritage site.

More information on the World heritage Mungo National Park can be found here.

Mungo National Park is a part of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area, a chain of dried-out lakes that were once strung between Willandra Creek and the main channel of the Lachlan River in Outback NSW.

Lake Mungo dried up around 14,000 years ago, and today a great crescent-shaped dune, called the Walls of China, stretches along the eastern shore of the lakebed.

In 1969 the remains of a cremated human skeleton, known as Mungo Woman, were found. Six years later, Mungo Man was discovered, buried in a pit strewn with ochre. Both skeletons are believed to be around 40,000 years old.

Stone flake tools are scattered across the landscape, and peeking out of the mud are ancient wombat holes, fossilised chunks of Eucalyptus trees, and the bones of long-dead marsupials, including extinct buffalo-sized wombats and giant kangaroos.