April 9 - heading to Lake Mungo the long way around

[Apologies that the next two posts are out of sequence - a mere hiccup in time!]

Off to Lake Mungo today - after another huge breakfast. Being Saturday the kitchen didn’t open till 8am so they packed us a box-breakfast. It was humongous - bacon and egg wrap, yogurt, fruit salad. Enough for two in each 'box'. We eventually rolled out to the vans (two 11-seater minibuses) for a 7:45 start heading for the Murray River and King Billabong Park. I have never really experienced the Murray River quite like this. We wandered alongside a large billabong - the Ducksfoot Lagoon which was so tranquil yet teeming with life. 

This sweet little thing is one of the smallest ferns, an Azollo fern.

As well as this wee fern we found many different species of plants, some of which were flowering, including a pretty mauve eremophila and a number of chenopods, one of my favourite plant families (sorry I'm strapped for plant names this trip as I forgot to pack my plant books. Not happy Jan!). 

Along the path we came across an Eastern Longneck turtle, diam ~30cm.

We were concerned it was stranded or injured so stood around quietly watching for signs that it was OK. Eventually it laboriously turned round and headed back in the direction of the river - we breathed a sigh of relief. But not far from this spot I saw broken eggs scattered under a Tangled Lignum – turtle eggs! Something had dug into the nest and had enjoyed a big feast. 

We had morning tea by this tranquil water – always cake and biscuits plus fruit but then we were back on the road heading for the Australian Inland Botanical gardens, the first semi-arid gardens established in the Southern Hemisphere. 

It was quite delightful. We wander through a section devoted to remnant salt-tolerant plants, another section crowded with desert plants including eremophila and a number of chenopod species (Mairenea sp and Copper Burr in the pix above), and everywhere mallee and acacia. One really eye-catching tree was the red-capped wattle, Eucalyptus erythrocorys. Huge bright yellow flowers that burst out of large woody buds topped with bright red caps (you can see a few red caps in one of the pix). 

On the left a 2500 year old Eucalytus oleosa

Many of our natives have adapted to, and some in fact require, fire to release their seeds. Some require the smoke and ash chemicals washed into the soil by rain to start their regeneration. One beautifully adapted species is the Eucalyptus oleosa (Red Mallee seen above) which regenerates new shoots after fire. The one above which while its branches are around 700 years old, its lignotuber (massive root) is 2500 years old. Beside the pix of this ancient tree is an image of what the roots of these Mallee look like - they are huge but the trees they support are often not very tall relative to their root size.

Then it was time to head northeast so we would reach Lake Mungo in time for happy hour - priorities! On the way we stopped and wandered along the dry creek bed of Willandra Creek, once  part of the Lachlan River system which fed the Willandra Lakes system; Lake Mungo is the terminal lake of that system. Although the creek is dry now there is a twisting line of trees where the creek occasionally 'flows' presumably after rain sufficient to keep the mallees alive. 

Alongside that dry creek bed we found evidence of human habitation – fire stones, stone cutting tools. It’s hard to comprehend that they had lain there for 10s of thousands of years occasionally brought to the surface by wind and rain. Bottom left is a rock from which smaller cutting tools had been struck from. On the bottom right are fire stones.

Of particular interest to me was evidence in the baked sediments and rocks from eroded fireplaces and earth ovens of the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field at the time those fires were used. They indicated that the Earth's axis rotated up to 120 degrees from its ‘normal’ (current) position around 30,000 years ago and then gradually returned again over thousands of years. Other evidence of this phenomenon has has been found in samples taken from sediments in Norway and France of a similar age. As a matter of interest (to some of you!) the Earth’s axis flips every ‘so often’ and this perhaps gives some time frame. I love the seeming timelessness of, and the changes in, our home planet – we live in a vast and fascinating world.  But moving on ........

We were driving into threatening slatey clouds which delivered their load! A huge rainstorm which belted down on the roof of the vans turned the dirt road into a quagmire - an interesting challenge for our two guide/drivers, Martin and Tim. The sky was slashed through with a double rainbow - quite spectacular. 

We made it to the Mungo Lodge without mishap and settled into quite luxurious accommodation (by our standards) with spectacular desert vistas. Of course as soon as we had dumped our bags we headed to the bar for drinks before sitting down to an absolutely delicious dinner of rack of lamb decorated with salt bush. We’d walked over 8 Km that day so we slept well which was a good thing because we were being picked up at 7am to launch into the next day’s explorations!