Mungo is one of the great treasures of the Australian outback—a place of extraordinary natural beauty and profound cultural significance. It forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Willandra Lakes Region, one of the first three Australian places to receive World Heritage status.
I had wanted to visit Mungo for years, ever since seeing photographs of its extraordinary, almost lunar landscapes. It was, in fact, the main reason for my entire journey into outback New South Wales, and I was so excited to finally be going.
Then came the rain. Huge downpours forced the park to close, and it remained closed for well over a month. As my departure approached, I had resigned myself to travelling through the outback without seeing the very place that had inspired the trip. Then, almost miraculously, Mungo reopened just days before I was due to arrive. Better still, on the very day I reached the park, the 70-kilometre Mungo self-drive tour—one of its great highlights—reopened as well. I was absolutely elated. After all the uncertainty, it felt as though Mungo had opened its gates especially for me.
And it certainly did not disappoint. The sculpted formations of the Walls of China and Red Top were extraordinary, particularly in the golden light of sunrise and sunset, when the colours, textures and shadows seemed to change by the minute. I joined an organised tour of the Walls of China one morning—the only way to venture properly into this fragile and culturally significant landscape—and loved it so much that I returned for another tour at sunset. I also watched the sun rise and set over Red Top on three consecutive days. Each time was different; each time was magical.
Beyond its famous lunettes, the rest of Mungo possesses its own stark and spacious beauty. The 70-kilometre self-drive tour carried me through an ever-changing landscape of ancient lakebeds, sweeping plains, sand dunes and distinct zones of mallee, grassland and woodland. It gave me a wonderful sense of the park’s scale and remarkable variety.
I was also extraordinarily fortunate to see Mungo after so much rain. The landscape was alive with fresh growth and wildflowers—a dramatic contrast to the terrible drought it had endured earlier in the year. The rain that had almost prevented me from visiting ultimately allowed me to experience the park at its most vibrant.
All in all, Mungo was everything I had hoped for and more: ancient, haunting, otherworldly and breathtakingly beautiful. A photographer’s paradise—and unquestionably one of the great highlights of my travels through Australia.
Places visited in the park
The visitor centre and what I discovered about Mungo's history
It was at the Mungo Visitor Centre, and later on my guided tours of the Walls of China, that I began to understand just how extraordinary this place really is. I had come to photograph its otherworldly landscapes, but discovered that Mungo is far more than a place of spectacular scenery. It is one of the most culturally and archaeologically significant places in Australia, with a human story stretching back tens of thousands of years.
For the Barkandji/Paakantji, Ngiyampaa and Mutthi Mutthi peoples, Mungo is not simply an archaeological site but a living cultural landscape—a place of ancestors, ceremony, memory and continuing spiritual connection. Hearing its stories while standing in the very landscape where they unfolded gave them a power that no book or documentary could have conveyed.
That ancient history was brought dramatically to the attention of the Western world in 1968, when geologist Jim Bowler discovered the remains of a woman now known as Mungo Lady. Her remains showed that she had been ritually cremated around 42,000 years ago, making hers the oldest known cremation in the world and revealing an extraordinarily ancient and complex spiritual culture. Six years later, Bowler discovered Mungo Man, who had also been ceremonially buried, his body sprinkled with red ochre brought from many kilometres away.
These discoveries transformed the Western understanding of Australia’s human history. Until then, many archaeologists had believed that Aboriginal people had arrived on the continent much more recently. Mungo Man and Mungo Lady provided compelling evidence of Aboriginal presence and ceremony more than 40,000 years ago—confirming what Aboriginal people themselves had always maintained: that their connection to this land stretches back into time immemorial. Wider archaeological evidence from the Willandra Lakes Region now indicates human occupation extending back perhaps 45,000 to 60,000 years.
The story became even more remarkable in 2003, when Mutthi Mutthi woman Mary Pappin Jr discovered ancient human footprints preserved in the clay of the dry lakebed. Around 500 footprints have since been identified, made by adults, teenagers and children approximately 20,000 years ago. They form the largest known collection of Ice Age human footprints in the world. Unlike bones and stone tools, the tracks capture a fleeting moment of life: people walking together across damp ground, children moving among them, and at least one person apparently running. Standing in that landscape today, it is extraordinary to imagine those footsteps crossing the mud so many thousands of years ago.
The arid landscape we see today was once almost unimaginably different. Lake Mungo formed part of an immense chain of freshwater lakes fed by the ancestral Lachlan River. Its waters supported fish, freshwater mussels and abundant birdlife, while animals gathered along its fertile shores. Aboriginal communities camped beside the lake, fishing, hunting and gathering food in a landscape rich with life.
The wider Willandra region was also inhabited by Australia’s remarkable megafauna. These included the enormous wombat-like Diprotodon—the largest marsupial ever known and roughly the size of a rhinoceros—along with giant short-faced kangaroos and huge flightless birds standing more than two metres tall. As the climate became progressively drier, the lakes shrank and eventually disappeared. Wind and water then began sculpting the exposed layers of sand and clay, gradually revealing shells, animal bones, stone tools, fireplaces and other traces of the lives once lived along the lakeshore. The extraordinary formations of the Walls of China are therefore not only beautiful: they are layers of deep time laid bare.
European pastoralists moved into the region during the nineteenth century, turning the land into vast sheep stations. Mungo’s old woolshed, built from local cypress pine, remains as a striking reminder of that pastoral era. But it was the discoveries of Mungo Lady and Mungo Man in the 1960s and 1970s that brought the area international attention. Scientists, historians and visitors began to recognise Mungo as one of the world’s great cultural and archaeological landscapes.
Mungo National Park was established in 1979, and two years later the wider Willandra Lakes Region became one of Australia’s first World Heritage-listed places. Its haunting formations soon became an attraction in their own right, drawing photographers and travellers from around the world. Yet Mungo is far more than a tourist destination. It is simultaneously a natural wonder, an archive of climatic change and one of the most important places in the story of humanity—a landscape where Aboriginal culture, geological history and the lives of vanished animals are preserved together.
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| A beautiful stone sculpture at the Mungo Visitor Centre, echoing the shapes and textures of this ancient landscape. |
Mungo Woolshed
Beside the visitor centre stands Mungo’s historic woolshed, a reminder of the vast sheep stations that once dominated the outback. Like the woolshed I saw at Kinchega, it speaks both of pastoral ambition and its environmental cost. Huge flocks stripped the fragile native vegetation, while rabbits and recurring drought further damaged the soil. The land could not sustain such intensive grazing indefinitely, and the industry that had flourished by exploiting it eventually declined—a powerful lesson in the limits of this harsh and delicate environment.
Wall of China: First afternoon
The Walls of China are Mungo’s most celebrated feature: a spectacular 33-kilometre crescent-shaped ridge rising from the eastern edge of the ancient lakebed. This type of formation is known as a lunette, from the French for “little moon,” because of its crescent shape—although its pale pinnacles and strange, sculpted terrain certainly look wonderfully lunar as well.
The lunette was built up over tens of thousands of years as prevailing westerly winds swept sand and clay from the lake and deposited them along its eastern shore. Since the lake dried out, wind and rain have carved those accumulated layers into fragile towers, ridges and gullies, revealing a remarkable record of changing climates and ancient life. The landscape is still moving: wind continues to lift loose sand from the lunette and carry it eastwards, creating a mobile dune that slowly advances across the plain. Mungo is not a fossilised landscape but one that is still being shaped before our eyes.
Wall of China morning tour
I took two guided tours into the Walls of China, one in the morning and another at sunset, and the landscape looked completely different each time. In the clear morning light, I could appreciate the details, textures and subtle layers of colour in the formations. At sunset, everything became more dramatic: the low light intensified the reds and golds, while deep shadows transformed the ridges into an almost otherworldly landscape. It is a photographer’s paradise, constantly changing with the angle and colour of the light.
Our Aboriginal guide was full of fascinating information, but what stayed with me most was the sense of reverence with which he spoke about the park. Through him, the Walls became much more than a collection of beautiful geological formations. They were part of a sacred cultural landscape containing the traces of countless generations. Being allowed to walk there with someone who understood that connection so deeply made both tours feel like a privilege rather than simply another sightseeing experience.
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The kids on the tour had lots of fun on the dune!
Wall of China: Sunset tour
At sunset, the Walls of China seemed to glow from within. The fading light set the sculpted clay ablaze in shades of gold, orange and deep red, while long shadows accentuated every ridge and curve. For a few magical minutes, the entire lunette appeared illuminated—an ancient landscape transformed into something almost otherworldly.
Red Tops at sunrise
Red Top lies farther south along the same great lunette that forms the Walls of China. Here, a boardwalk carries you remarkably close to the sculpted formations without requiring a guided tour, allowing you to linger and absorb the landscape at your own pace. Its deeply eroded ridges glow in shades of rust, ochre, cream and red, with every change in the light revealing new shapes and textures.
I visited Red Top at both sunrise and sunset for three days in a row, and found it absolutely mesmerising. No two visits looked the same. At sunrise, the first gentle light slowly revealed the colours and contours of the formations; at sunset, they seemed to ignite, glowing intensely before gradually sinking back into shadow. However many times I returned, I never tired of watching that transformation.
What made the experience even more special was that, almost every time I went, I had Red Top entirely to myself. I found this extraordinary, given that it is one of Mungo’s major landmarks and there were plenty of other visitors in the park. It almost felt as though I was meant to be there alone—as if I had been given the landscape, briefly and impossibly, all to myself.
Although I had come to Mungo to take photographs, there were many moments at Red Top when I deliberately put my camera aside. I simply stood there in the silence and allowed myself to be fully present—to feel the peace, the immense depth of time and the sacredness of the land. Those quiet periods of doing nothing but looking and absorbing became some of the most meaningful moments of my entire journey. Red Top was not merely something beautiful to photograph; it was a landscape to be still with, and to let sink deeply into me.
Red Tops at sunset
At sunset, Red Top seemed to glow from within, its ochre and rust-coloured formations illuminated against the deepening shadows. For a few magical minutes, the ancient landscape appeared almost ablaze.
Mungo self-drive tour
The 70-kilometre Mungo self-drive tour was a wonderful way to explore the rest of the park beyond the famous lunettes. The route loops around the ancient lakebed and passes through a surprising variety of landscapes, revealing just how much more there is to Mungo than the Walls of China and Red Top. I set out early in the morning, when the light was soft and golden and the park felt wonderfully still.
One of my favourite stops was the Mallee Stop, where I took a lovely short walk through the shrubland. After all the rain, the landscape was extraordinarily green and alive, with wildflowers scattered among the undergrowth and beautiful mallee trees rising above it. Their twisting trunks and delicate foliage caught the early light beautifully.
The drive gave me a much fuller appreciation of Mungo’s diversity. Within a relatively short distance, the vegetation and character of the landscape changed repeatedly—from open plains and saltbush to dense mallee and sandy dunes. Travelling slowly, stopping often and having the freedom to wander made it feel less like a drive and more like a gradual immersion in the park.
Dunes at Vigar's Well
At Vigars Well, I stopped to explore the sweeping dunes rising above the surrounding plain. Their flowing lines, wind-rippled surfaces and constantly shifting patterns of light and shadow made them wonderfully photogenic. After the rich colours and sculpted formations elsewhere in Mungo, the simplicity of sand, sky and open space had a beauty all its own.
Standing at the top of the dunes, I felt completely elated—and suddenly overcome by the urge to run all the way down, as you can see in the video below. For a few glorious moments I felt like a child again, racing through the sand simply for the joy of it. It is never too late to have a happy childhood!
Kangaroos at Mungo
The kangaroos were another delight. After the terrible drought earlier in the year, they seemed to be revelling in the abundance brought by the rain, grazing among the fresh green growth and wildflowers. Nature in the outback so often swings between feast and famine, which made it especially heartening to see them enjoying such generous conditions.
There were some very cute youngsters among them, keeping close to their mothers or bounding awkwardly through the vegetation. They brought a lovely sense of playfulness and new life to this ancient landscape.
Reptiles at Mungo
While driving around Mungo, I encountered both shingleback lizards and central bearded dragons crossing the road. The shingleback was such a strange-looking creature that, when I first saw it, I thought it had somehow lost its tail during an encounter with a predator—rather like a gecko shedding its tail in an emergency.
In fact, its short, blunt tail is entirely natural. It stores fat and resembles the lizard’s head, which may help confuse predators about which end to attack. Unlike many geckos, a shingleback cannot simply shed its tail and grow another. The bearded dragons were equally wonderful to see, adding another unexpected dimension to the wildlife encountered along the drive.
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| Shingleback Lizard |
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| Central Bearded Dragon |
Birds at Mungo
Nankeen Kestrels were a wonderful sight around the park, hovering almost motionless above the scrubland as they searched for prey. They used the wind with astonishing precision, making tiny adjustments of their wings and tails to remain suspended in the air—beautiful displays of effortless mastery.
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| Nankeen Kestrel |
Black Kites were everywhere, either soaring effortlessly on the wind or perched at the very tops of tall trees, surveying the country below. Opportunistic and remarkably adaptable, they seem perfectly at home in the harsh conditions of the outback. They are among the most numerous birds of prey on Earth and are often described as the world’s most abundant raptor.
Despite their size, they were sometimes mercilessly mobbed by much smaller birds, including butcherbirds, as in the photographs below. This behaviour is usually an attempt to drive a potential predator away from a nest, young birds or feeding territory. By repeatedly diving at the kite—often with other birds joining in—the smaller attackers make remaining in the area so irritating that it eventually moves on. Extremely effective, although I am sure the long-suffering kites find it infuriating!
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| Black Kite |
I am not usually a great fan of mynas—the introduced Common Mynas in Sydney can be aggressive and even used to dive-bomb poor Mack! These Yellow-throated Miners, however, are fair dinkum Australian birds, unrelated to those introduced troublemakers, and I found them far more pleasant company.
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| Yellow-throated Miner |
Near Mungo Lookout, I spotted cockatiels moving through the bushes—the first time I had ever seen them in the wild. I was so excited! Familiar as cage birds, they seemed completely different here: alert, free and perfectly at home in the outback landscape.
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| Cockatiel |
Enormous flocks of Straw-necked Ibis swept across the landscape, constantly gathering, separating and reforming into ever-shifting shapes in the sky. Watching the entire flock move almost as a single living organism was an extraordinary sight—another vivid sign of how quickly the outback responds when drought gives way to rain and abundance.
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| Straw-necked Ibis |
Australasian Pipits were easy to overlook as they moved quietly through the open grassland, their streaked brown plumage blending beautifully with the earth. They would suddenly rise in a fluttering flight before settling back onto the ground, characteristically bobbing their tails as they searched for insects and seeds.
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| Australasian Pipit |
At the Walls of China, I spotted a Black-faced Woodswallow perched in the low scrub. With its distinctive dark face and soft grey plumage, it made a lovely little subject against the muted colours of the ancient landscape.
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| Black-faced Woodswallow |
I had seen plenty of emus before, but these were the first I had encountered truly in the wild, which made them feel especially exciting. Some of the adults were accompanied by beautifully striped chicks—and I was amazed by how fast those little legs could carry them, with their parent running madly alongside. What I had assumed was the mother was almost certainly the father: among emus, it is the male who incubates the eggs and then protects and raises the chicks.
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| Emu with chicks |
Mungo Outlook
The final thing I did, early on the morning of my departure, was walk to Mungo Lookout and gaze across the vast, epic landscape one last time. I felt immensely blessed to have experienced this extraordinary place. I had wanted to come to Mungo for so many years, and despite almost missing it entirely, it proved more than worth the wait.
