15 June 2026 – 88 kms – Mungo National Park to Pooncarie
Barkindji, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyampaa Country
Everyone is standing around with hunched shoulders, hands in pockets, backs to the wind. There is a layer of cloud over the sun and the wind is bringing the temperature right down. We’re all here for the aboriginal-led tour of Lake Mungo. And everyone is wishing it would hurry up and start because it’s freezing just standing here.
Eventually, a guy gets out of his ranger truck and says, “Everyone here for the tour, just get in your vehicles and follow me”.
Shit. I, of course, do not have a vehicle. The tour description said that there would be a short welcome to country before you follow the ranger out to the Walls Of China site. I was planning on asking for a lift from someone after that concluded.
Eeek! There’s a few women next to me and I ask if they might happen to have a spare seat I could take, as I’m travelling by bike. Luckily, they are amenable to this idea and I hop in the back seat of their car.
And so I meet Gayle, Carla and Narelle, all bright and spunky women in their late 60s and 70s. They are on an adventure to test out Gayle’s new car. The adventure is as much about figuring out the vehicle as it is about the road and journey. The car is very bossy and noisy, apparently.
Gayle and Carla met playing hockey a very long time ago. They met Narelle on a cruise sometime later. They’ve now been lifelong friends and are from Melbourne and regional areas near there. They are heading to Broken Hill for a few days. They are very intelligent, know their birds and are everything I’d hope to be at their age – only still on the bike! There are so few good role models in that age group with so many women dependent on their husband, or their dead or ex-husband’s money, that it’s awesome to see some independent and adventurous women out there.
The tour guide is a bit brusque to start but eventually warms up. The poor fellow lives onsite and got a call at 8am that the normal guide hadn’t shown up, so could he please do the tour today? So you are allowed to be a bit grumpy when you are called in on your day off.
There’s not a whole lot of info presented that I don’t already know from the past few days, but he does ask if anyone at the campground had noticed the bright lights off to the southeast at night. Everyone shrugs their shoulders, but I say yes! I wondered what it was because Balranald is too small and too far away to cause that much light pollution. Turns out it is a mineral sands mine operating 24/7 that is right on the park boundary. It is good that the region has World Heritage protection, or there would probably be mining of lots of lunettes and dunes and sand plains that hold aboriginal remains and artefacts.
Our guide notes that the erosion here is one metre per year and points out how much has changed in just the nine years he has been there. All the sand and clay is being eroded from the bottom of the lunette and dumped over the back. Artefacts and remains become uncovered all the time. Over 100 burials have been found, but these are stabilised and covered back over.
He shows us the tips of a bunch of freshwater mussel shells that are now being uncovered by the wind and water – it will be a whole midden exposed over time. He also points out what would have been a wombat burrow.
Finding middens in Australia is not an uncommon occurrence, but when you think that the last time the lake would have had freshwater mussels was at least 18,000 years ago, it feels a little remarkable to be standing there looking at them so casually.
My new friends are heading out to the Red Top Lookout at the end of the tour. They are more than happy to take me along. But I’ve already been out there, and I need to get back to the bike and get a move on toward Pooncarie. I have 88 kms to do this arvo, 60 of that on dirt of unknown quality and I won’t get a start until about 11.45am. Daylight is going to be a squeeze today.
So the ranger gives me a ride back to the visitor centre. I say, “sorry, I know it’s probably against some WHS rules or something to give me a lift.”
He just says, “Well, probably, but I can give a lift to a cyclist or a motorcyclist from time to time. You do it pretty tough to get out here on a pushie!”
The conversation in that 10 minutes back to the visitor centre is worth the whole cost of the tour. I ask him what the biggest challenges are in park management. He just says, “Government.” There are many layers of it out here. Anytime the Traditional Custodians, who have a joint management agreement with the NPWS, want to do anything, there’s some government legislation or World Heritage clause that prevents it.
He talks about the on-going trauma and lack of understanding that has come from the scientists removing remains and artefacts without permission back in the 1960s and 70s. He talks about all of the politics related to the repatriation of Mungo Lady and Mungo Man’s remains. Some of the archeologists thought it was okay to return Mungo Man to the site but not to rebury him – they thought he should still be available for research. The ranger says, “So what if one of the white people’s elders, like what if someone had taken Captain Cook’s remains, and never let him go home to Country?”
There are strict controls on any research done on-site now, and there is a partnership approach. However, the Traditional Custodians don’t necessarily buy into the research findings. The ranger gives some examples of flaws that he sees in some of it. They provide information and data and knowledge from their view of the world that inputs into the research but don’t worry too much about the official findings. They know they’ve been here since the Dreamtime, so, for example, controversies related to dating of remains and artefacts don’t bother them because they know the real story. They acknowledge, though, that the science has helped protect the area and their long connection to their Country from greater harm. They feel that Mungo Man, who would have been a revered Elder at the time of his death around age 50 42,000 years ago, revealed himself intentionally so the whitefellas could learn and respect their culture.
We discuss a few other things before he drops me back to my bike. Like so many things, there is so much complexity in everything out here and how we move into the future.
I quickly eat some peanut butter and corn thins to give me some fuel for the road. I’ve got 3 litres of water for the 88 kms – two for today and one for tomorrow, if I can’t get all the way to Pooncarie today.
Then, we’re off. I did note while we were standing on top of the lunette that the wind was from the north instead of the northeast, which is what the weather forecast indicated. I’d hoped for northeasterly because that would be a quartering tailwind across the 60 kms of dirt and then a quartering headwind the last 28 kms on chipseal. But it looks like we get 60 kms of crosswind and 28 kms of headwind instead.
The first 30 kms are across Lake Dorchup, another smaller Willandra region lake, so the surface is pretty good. It’s dried and packed loam/mud. We also have a gentle downhill into the lake bed, so I tick off some kms pretty fast.
Then there’s the gentle climb out of the lake until we hit the red dunes again and climb up and over each one of them for 10 kms. I continue to learn how to read the road out here. The corrugations are always 200 metres either side of a grid and on the uphill side of the dune. Knowing this, you can kinda pre-position yourself on the uphills so as not to find yourself in the corrugations. I weave all over the road finding the best line and ride up every dune on the wrong side of the road on the ‘downhill’ side.
I will see two 4WDs that pass from behind, 2 caravans that pass from behind and 1 oncoming caravan and 1 oncoming 4WD over that 60kms. Everyone waves enthusiastically. I’m sure I’m a pretty unique sighting and maybe as exciting as spotting emus and other wildlife.
Kms 41 to 51 are slow and torturous over sandhills and plains. It’s very chunky, sometimes with dinner-plate-sized road base, thick corrugations and no downhills steep enough that let you rest and stop pedalling for a second. Oh my goodness, that goes on and on!
We finally get to the edge of the dunes and it is easier going again on a harder baked mud surface. We are higher in the landscape here, and some farmer has even sowed a crop on a relatively flat bit.
I stop for a snack where the dirt meets the chipseal, before I tackle the final 28 kms into the wind. I have all my snacks in the fork bags, so I just unceremoniously drop the bike to the ground right on the edge of the road, sit on the edge of the road and chomp away. One ute does stop and pull into the dirt road and asks, “Everything okay?”. I yell out, “yes, thanks”, and give a thumbs up.
And then we are off into the wind as the sun inches toward the horizon behind bits and pieces of cumulus clouds. There are some bigger trees to start, then it’s just boring belah and rosewood that have been cleared in places to create greater gaps for grazing.
We’re riding through the edges of the Darling River floodplain and it’s a bit boring. The goats remain smelly. And we just keep pedalling. I’m not sure if we’re gonna make Pooncarie until after dark with that headwind. We’ll make it today, but the timing is uncertain.
Pedal, pedal, pedal. It reminds me of that day in Valentine, Nebraska, where I did a river trip in the morning and then pounded out 60 miles through the Sandhills in the afternoon before setting up camp at a lake just before storms came. I had a lot more daylight to work with then, though.
I need another term or acronym to use on this trip to cover the many kms along the river floodplain that is “Boring as Fuck”. I’ll work on that over the next few days, as we get stuck in the same scenery for many kms.
I progress north into the wind as the sun progresses to the horizon. I’m tired at this point and the last 15 kms seem to go slow. I’m still doing 15kph, but it feels much slower.
Pooncarie just sort of appears out of the dunes and scrub, as some cottages and the tiny general store come into view. It’s the long side of dusk, and with the clouds, it already feels dark.
I pull up to the pub. Two tables of oldies sitting outside are all smiles as I roll in. I hear one say, “Wow – she made it”. I can only assume those are the people from the two caravans that passed me about 4 hours ago.
I park the bike, and a young bloke having a cigarette, who looks like Vance Joy with curly hair and tiny eyes, asks how I’m going. He says, “that’s quite a rig.”
Turns out he is the bartender and everything else but the cook. They have single rooms for $50. That’s fantastic – singles are typically $70-80 minimum these days. He takes me around to show me where it is and says they have a full menu tonight. After 5 days of rice and lentils and peanut butter and corn thins, I’m ready for something substantial. The guy can’t believe I’ve ridden all the way there from Mungo today.
The room is small and basic and has interesting inclusions. The shower/toilet is pretty old but clean with questionable plumbing. Most importantly, the shower is hot and has good pressure, and the toilet flushes, for now at least. Just don’t look at that water that bubbles up from the overflow drain.
The pub is old – from the 1870s I think, back when Pooncarie was a stop for the riverboat trade. The front bar is small, with a couple of wooden tables that poke out from the wall with stools underneath and a long, wooden, curved bar that seats about seven. The walls are adorned with historic photos, taxidermied fish and old maps. Next to the front bar is a small room with some booths and a wood heater. This space leads into the dining room which is just tables and chairs and not a lot of decoration. The accommodation rooms are all in a long section that runs perpendicular down the back. The ensuites all have sliding glass doors that open onto the big beer garden. You go down and around these to get to the singles without ensuites on the back side. There’s a row of dongas that face the single rooms.
The pub is super busy. It’s the only place in town for food. The general store does some basic stuff but it closes by 5pm. There’s a cafe, but it’s only open for breakfast and lunch. Add in the post office, a primary school and about 15 houses, and that is the town!
There are a bunch of old farmers in there in flannelettes and long pants. They tend to be lean and lined with wrinkles. They all have an angular crookedness or hunch about them but are likely to live forever. There are a bunch of young contract shearers and some government workers given away by uniforms with fluoro highlights and reflective strips. The pub is definitely the critical piece of infrastructure in this town.
The pizzas look absolutely chock full of toppings if you are into class 1 carcinogens. Everything else I see come out of the kitchen is of very generous portions, also. I am able to get a gluten free chicken schnitzel with chips and veg. The schnitzel is huge, and I’ll take half of it with me for tomorrow. The chips portion is generous and the cooked veg is perfect – not overcooked, not all of frozen origin, and a nice mix of carrot, broccoli, zucchini, green beans and corn. Oh, do those hit the spot – and there’s at least a cup and a half of them. It’s a fantastic conclusion to a very good day!
