Mungo National Park

Had a great week at work – a couple of lovely births and a handful of challenging ones too!  July has sure proven to be busy for the unit and we have overflowed on to other wards a couple of times during the week.
Mal hasn’t had any bites on his ads in the local paper for handyman work or from his flyers which he posted around the area, however I am keeping him busy with bits and bobs on the caravan and getting us ready to put our solar panels on etc.  He is also busy studying electrical stuff so that he can renew his registration ready for a job in Perth which is where we have decided we will settle for a while in a few months time. I have extended my contract here till the end of September – although they keep trying to talk me in to staying for good.  They are so short staffed already and have 3 more staff leaving for different reasons over the next few weeks.  Mildura is a nice place but it doesn’t seem to be overflowing with work for Mal.  Will be good to be around till spring though.
Had a day off today so we put Chip in a local kennel for the day so we could head out to Mungo National Park.  We were going to go on an organised tour but the times didn’t suit with dropping Chip off, and it seemed a bit expensive at $120 each when you can do a self guided tour with brochures from the Information Centre.  The park is 110km north-east of Mildura (actually in NSW) with 88km of that on dirt unsealed road.  If it rains they close the road pretty quickly – we were worried that it might rain while we were out there and we wouldn’t be able to get back, but the rain held off till we were back on sealed road on our way home! The Park lies within the Willandra Lakes Regions World Heritage Area.  There is evidence of around 40,000 years of human occupation in the area.  A large raised area of ‘lunettes’ called the Walls of China contain evidence of campfires, cooking hearths and burial sites.
Here are some photos of our days outing -
Driving on the dirt track in to the National Park


All along the way we came across Emus…most ran away when we approached but these ones were a bit more leisurely



The Walls of China are the main attraction at the National Park – they run along a huge area and have lovely colours of sand and lunettes – quite amazing scenery
below are a panoramic view of the Walls


and here are the closer photos of the amazing landscape

This memorial was infront of the Walls of China lookout – its for a Tour Guide that died

By the Information Centre is the Mungo Woolshed which was constructed in 1869 made from locally hand cut Cypress Pine (which is termite resistant - otherwise it wouldn't still be standing!!)

We headed to Mungo Lodge for lunch – lovely quiche and salad with a wine and beer of course!

On the way out of the Park we stopped off to have a closer look at a wrecked car which has been made in to a piece of art…on closer inspection it had a number of very wise statements punched in to pieces of tin - if you click on a photo if will open bigger and you will be able to read them

No need to say that Chip was wrapt to see us when we got back to the kennel :)