We filled the jerry cans with fuel and filled the car before heading to Mungo. Its 110km from Mildura and 88km of that is dirt. It wasn’t long before we hit corrugations, so Chris deflated the tyres again and it was much smoother. The road had water across it in several places; it got wetter the further we went in, it seemed they had more than 10mm out here. The road is a mix of some good bits, some dusty areas, corrugations, wet, but not much loose stuff.
We set up in the camp area first, which is quite a big area with sites well spread out with plenty of room. Each site seems to have a BBQ fire on a concrete slab and a round drum for general fires. Some had tables and it looks as if they are making shade areas for some sites. There are gas BBQ, under a big shelter with tables and some pretty good long drop dunnies. Sites cost are $5 per person per night, there is also a $7 vehicle day fee.
We then briefly checked out the visitor centre and paid our fees for 2 nights, we may stay 3 depends on the weather. There are shearers quarter’s people can stay at and a big woolshed we haven’t look at yet. The Walls of China are open, the Red Top area is open but the self drive loop road is closed due to water on the road, we hope it will open before we leave.
After lunch we went and had a look at the Walls of China, to spy out spots to go back to late arvo and sunset. The Walls of China are very interesting and intricate; they are the sand mounds that come up out of the ground, with lots of patterns and grooves, they are formed from water erosion. Some are group together, and then others are on their own. They are very spread out and cover a large area, some of which we won’t get to. During the middle of the day they are mostly a very light sandy colour, some do have pinks through them. Late in the day they are a nice golden yellow to red as the late arvo sun lights them up. The Red Top area is amazing, the patterns and details are incredible, I cannot put into words how incredible they area, as they say a picture paints a thousand words.
By late arvo there were quite a few people here, including 3 Ultimate Campers, we don’t see many of them and today we see 3 and none of them are together. One lot came up to the other lot and said the same thing “we don’t see many Ultimate campers and just here there are 3” I said to Chris they are having an Ultimate Party.
Speaking of Ultimate we had our own Ultimate party, we were sitting outside having a cuppa and a muffin watching the Ultimate people set up their Ultimate camper which seemed to take up a lot of Ultimate time, we said to each other we are so pleased we have an Ultimate set up with a van which only takes a few Ultimate mins to set up. Anyway back to our party, we had a few unexpected but welcome guests, 9 Apostle Birds decided to drop in for a bite to eat and started eating our muffin crumps. Being the good hosts we are we got them some delicious sunflowers seeds which they loved and were chirping away quite happily, coming very close to our lovely feet. They were very entertaining guests, ones you could sit and watch for hours, but alas our Banana Smoothie was calling to us as we had to get ready for our arvo shots. A little why later our guests politely left only to return with 30 other friends, oh no what have we started, don’t you hate party crashers. I can see it now we will be the place to be, where it’s all happening about 4pm every arvo.
To get to the Walls of China you cross the dried lake bed of Mungo Lake, it’s a dusty dirt road with some corrugations, takes about 8 mins to cross, the lake bed. In the arvo we saw 9 Emus within the vicinity of the road, and some Kangaroos. When we went back around 5pm we saw 18 emus, 2 were very close to the road and 1 darted out in the front of the car, we were so close to hitting it, Chris had to come to a screaming halt. There must be an awful lot over the whole lake.
If we do say so ourselves the late arvo and early evening shots we got are pretty awesome, it’s hard to know where to point the camera. We will be busy early morning and late arvo taking shots and then resting during the day unless they open the loop road
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