Lake Mungo Rangers Taught Me How the Ancient Landscape is a Living Museum

Pat recently travelled to Mungo National Park to spend time with Aunty Tanya Charles, a Traditional Owner of Lake Mungo. As a park ranger, Tanya’s not only responsible for running tours of the lunettes, but also protecting and preserving the cultural and historical artefacts hidden in the lake’s layers.

We Are Explorers acknowledges that this adventure is located on the traditional Country of the Mutthi Mutthi, Barkindji, and Ngiyampaa people who have occupied and cared for the lands, waters, and their inhabitants for thousands of years. We pay our respects to them as the Traditional Custodians and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.

It’s late afternoon and I’m walking through the lunettes in Mungo National Park with my partner and a small group of visitors. We’re following Aunty Tanya Charles, a proud Mutthi Mutthi woman and Discovery Ranger, across the parched earth that once formed the silty bottom of Lake Mungo.

Despite the lateness of the day, the heat is relentless. Sunset can’t come soon enough. We’re surrounded by dirt and dust. Fine sand and dry scrub. This all served with a side of disbelief as Tanya shares this Country’s stories with us.

A Remote and Sacred Place

Aunty Tanya knows Lake Mungo better than anyone. She’s worked as a Discovery Ranger for 20 years and been caring for this land even longer. For her, Mungo is one of the most sacred places in Australia.

This is my fourth time on Country with Aunty Tanya. In the past, I’ve visited as part of my job facilitating student immersions on First Nations homelands. I remember walking through the lunettes with a ten-year-old boy on one of my first immersions. As we approached the eroded dunes that mark the lake’s eastern shore, he began crying. His teacher and I were quick to check in with him as we were concerned about heat exhaustion.

We asked if everything was okay and the boy nodded. ‘It’s just overwhelming’, he said. ‘Everything here is so old.’

An Ancient Museum

The kid wasn’t wrong. The lakebed contains three distinct layers. The Zanci layer – a pale brown colour – is the most recent, deposited 15,000–25,000 years ago. The Mungo layer spans 25–50,000 years and the red Gol Gol layer, which is the oldest, dates back over 100,000 years. It’s no wonder Aunty Tanya describes this place as an ancient museum.

‘You’ve got your own museums in your cities and towns’, she says. ‘You’ve got things locked away. But out here, nothing’s locked away. It’s an education centre. It’s about, you know, passing our knowledge down.’

Hidden in Sand, Shared by Spirits

As we walk, Tanya stops to point out ancient fish bones, fire scars, and the remains of a Diprotodon, a rhinoceros-sized relative of the wombat that once roamed the Willandra Lakes. She bends down to inspect what looks to me like a featureless patch of earth and finds something she hasn’t seen before. Clay balls, she reckons.

They would’ve been burned in a fire and played with by children as their mother cooked. Sure enough, the dark smear of an emerging fire scar can be seen just metres away. Tanya takes a photo, marks the spot with small sticks and moves on.

There’ll be no excavation here. Tens of thousands of years of history lay in the landscape and the wind and rain will reveal it in time. Tanya says that rather than dig, she has waited up to ten years for something to become fully exposed. It’s important to protect and preserve, but one must also be patient. Tanya has to wait until the spirits are ready to reveal what’s been hidden. She has to earn her right to talk about it.

‘I do feel it’s the spirits shifting things out here’, Tanya says. ‘Sometimes you’ve got a special group with you and the spirits want to show you something. They want you to learn about something. But I’ve also been out here with other groups and it’s all been closed to them. I know there and then that they’re not going to learn from the land. They’ll only learn what I tell them.’

Balancing Priorities

A critical aspect of Aunty Tanya’s work is documenting what she finds in the lake’s layers. In the past, the rangers have had to contend with treasure hunters stealing artefacts, but her current challenge is balancing the important work of protection and preservation with educating visitors and running tours.

‘Sometimes things are moving so quick out there. I’ve got so much work to do recording and taking photos of things. It’s like the spirits just said “Here, you get everything today”. Once I’ve got the photo evidence, I can cover and protect it.’

Looking to the Future and Rewriting the Past

To free up more of her time, Aunty Tanya hopes to train young Mutthi Mutthi, Barkindji, and Ngiyampaa people (the Traditional Owners of Lake Mungo) as rangers. She’s hopeful too, that young archaeologists – like her niece, who’s currently studying in Melbourne – will bring fresh eyes and ears to the region.

‘They’re going to have open minds’, says Tanya. ‘These other fellas [the early archaeologists], it was like they had their own society. And if you said something different you were the worst person for even saying it. They wouldn’t go back further than 42,000 years.’

She’s referring to the dating of Lake Mungo’s most famous residents: Mungo Man and Mungo Lady. These human remains – Australia’s oldest – have been dated back 42,000 years but Tanya, and other members of the scientific community, argue Australia’s First People have been around much, much longer.

‘We know we’re older than that’, Tanya says. ‘The evidence is in the landscape and they can’t deny it.’

Tanya shares a story of showing archaeologists evidence of her ancestors in the red Gol Gol layer. Tanya asked if they would try to date and study the artefacts but didn’t get an answer. That same day, she showed them a wombat that had been exposed in the same layer.

It’s a number that’s hard to fathom. A number that needs to be felt, not read. And as we sit on the dunes, with a full moon rising behind us, it’s impossible not to feel the weight – the energy – of this place. It’s impossible not to feel like this Country has more to teach us.

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