Heading inland

On Saturday morning we picked up our hire car and headed out of the city. Of course, getting out of the centre of Melbourne was a lot more difficult than that but I won't go into detail, let's just say the air in the car was quite blue by the time we got onto the Calder Highway . We settled into the 550 km journey and headed north inland to a place called Mildura. We are ultimately heading for Brisbane to spend a few more days with Matt's sister but thought we would take the back roads and see a bit of the New South Wales outback.

We arrived in Mildura just in time to see the tail end of their very own mardi gras. Perhaps not quite the spectacle that was taking place in Sydney at that very moment; we really did catch the tail end which consisted of floats from many of the town's businesses, well more like banners and a few limp balloons for the most part. I think the front end of the procession was a bit more exciting as we caught a glimpse of some sequins and pom poms way up ahead. In any case the townsfolk were having a good time cheering on at the side of the road.

While in Mildura we took a trip out to Mungo National Park and because it's unsealed bumpy road we hired a guide with a 4WD. It's remote, vast and is where the now long dried up Lake Mungo lies. Human skeletons and artefacts have been found here dating back some 40,000+ years, the oldest remains of human settlements in the world. According to our guide, Graeme, excavation work stopped in the 1970s and has pretty much ceased. The possible reason being that Aborigines have always claimed they were the first human inhabitants in the country; the human remains found were significantly different to aborigines and there is apparently no way they could have evolved into aborigines in just 40,000 or so years. Meaning there could have been a different type of human living here first. Which would possibly cause all sorts of potential issues for aboriginal heritage, land claims etc if it were true. Anyway, it was interesting if a little warm at 36 degrees.