I left Grampians and headed due north all the way to Victoria’s northern border. About half way there, I broke up my drive with a quick stop to see a pink lake, Lake Tyrell. Turns out, it’s a dry lake most of the time, but it did have a distinct pink hue. It’s part of an ancient basin that later became a salt lake when the ocean receded about a gazillion years ago. When it does get water, it quickly evaporates leaving a thick salt crust which is then mined.

I forgot the aboriginal name of the lake, but their name for it translates as Space Lake. Cool, right? When there was water here more regularly it reflected the stars in the night sky so perfectly that it felt like you were floating in space. I wish I could experience that! My experience here today, however, is extreme heat and just as many annoying flies as there are stars in that night sky.

Mt ultimate goal was quite a bit out of my way and pretty much the only thing to do in these parts, but I really wanted to see Mungo National Park just over the border in New South Wales, so here I am. I stopped in the very small town of Robinvale, where I decided to sleep. It’s not the usual place tourists stop, but it seemed easier for my purpose. I think the whole town is Thai expats. There’s four Thai restaurants and mostly Thai businesses on the main street. Two days of good Thai food in the Australian outback, sure, why not?

The main thing to see at Mungo is the so called Walls of China. They are rock formations at the edge of a massive lake that dried out about 18,000 years ago. More importantly, though, the whole area was and is the home of three aboriginal tribes, the Paakantji, the Muthi Muthi, and the Ngiyampaa, that are also currently in charge of the national park. I booked an aboriginal led tour so that I could get past the fenced off viewing platform and see some unusual rock formations, but it ended up being a much more educational and rewarding experience than just that.

You can make out the path we took through the “walls” in the pic below. Along the way I learned that the wind and rare rain erosion is continually revealing archeological evidence of the ancient civilizations that existed here. The guide points out seemingly insignificant depressions in the ground, tiny little rocks, microscopic little pieces of bone and sea shells, and can tell us what exactly took place there. Whether it was a family dwelling or a ceremonial location; whether it was a group of men or women or both; whether they were eating, praying, or cremating someone; what they were eating; how long ago this took place. It was really incredible!

This place is also very significant because it’s where they found evidence of a roughly 40,000 year old elaborate burial and an over 26,000 year old ritual cremation, the oldest known ritual cremation in the world. Before these discoveries it was thought that aboriginal people didn’t even arrive in Australia until 20,000 years ago. Crazy!

The guide also pointed out several different sets of tracks. Several of them I couldn’t get pictures of because idiots would walk over them after they were pointed out. Grrrr! I got pics of the fox tracks, which is an invasive and very much hated species in Australia, and the Emu track.

We also found a couple of spearheads along the way. The first was very small and was used for fishing. The second was larger and had dried blood on it. Blood from what though? Who knows?

And of course, the rock formations were quite something too.

Well, this was an ultra quick stop, but an extremely rewarding one. Now I’ll be quickly making my way across northern Victoria for more of this unusual country. Stay tuned…