Qualla: Mungo National Park

Mungo National Park: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Davidspicerj, CC BY-SA 4.0. For tens of thousands of years, the people of this Country have known their ancestors were here. When the lake that filled this basin was still brimming with fresh water - long before the last Ice Age drained it - the Paakantyi, Ngiyampaa and Mutthi Mutthi peoples fished its shallows, gathered along its shores, and laid their dead to rest in the sandy ridge above the water. Their descendants never left. What scientists would later call one of the most important archaeological landscapes on the planet, the Aboriginal custodians of Mungo simply call home - a place where the connection to ancestors stretches back unbroken across more than 40,000 years.

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Image: Davidspicerj | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mungo National Park: The Walls of China

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henczar, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is no water at Lake Mungo now. The lake dried out at the end of the last Ice Age, and what remains is a vast pale floor of clay and grass, rimmed on its eastern edge by a crescent of bone-coloured dunes the early Chinese station workers nicknamed the Walls of China. Wind an...

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Image: Henczar | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mungo National Park: Mungo Lady and Mungo Man

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MrActiniuM, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1968, geologist Jim Bowler noticed burnt bone weathering out of the lunette. The remains were those of a young woman - Mungo Lady - who had died perhaps 42,000 years ago. Her body had been cremated, the bones then crushed and buried with care. It is the oldest known cremation ...

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Image: MrActiniuM | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mungo National Park: A Long Journey Home

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ProfCockington, CC BY-SA 4.0. The discoveries reshaped the world's understanding of how long Aboriginal people have lived in Australia, pushing the timeline back tens of thousands of years. But that knowledge came at a cost the science of the day rarely acknowledged: the ancestors were removed from Country an...

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Image: ProfCockington | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mungo National Park: Country, Cared For

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alakebro, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mungo is now jointly managed by the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service together with the elders of the three traditional owner groups - the Paakantyi, Ngiyampaa and Mutthi Mutthi - whose voices guide how this place is protected and shared. Visitors can walk the f...

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Image: Alakebro | CC BY-SA 4.0