Magic Mungo

Left Lake Pamamaroo and travelled on the best bitumen road so far to Pooncarie. In Pooncarie we found a great little coffee shop selling good coffee as well as homemade sausage rolls and jelly slice, according to Pete just like his Mum made! The winner for me was they also had gluten free orange cake…yum. From there we headed to Lake Mungo through the top end of the National Park which was an easy 100kms or so of unsealed road plenty of emus (one with all her babies), lizards and kangaroos, corrugations, low lying mallee trees, spinifex and saltbush.

After setting up our site we went out at sunset and snapped a few photos of the setting sun dancing with the shadows of the eroded landscape – very mars-like (well what we imagine mars to look like!).

The camping area has many kangaroos and their joeys enjoying the site, as well as an array of colourful birds.

This morning we set out on the self-drive circuit of 70km of corrugations around Lake Mungo – much the same type of scenery – low lying shrubs, mallee and barren landscape but with ridges of huge sand dunes.  While crossing the broad walk to the sand dunes a group of emus were there having a drink, they had found water in what to us looked like a dry barren landscape. We ventured across this desolate area taking the opportunity to enjoy the remoteness and marvel at what can grow in this type of environment.

Tomorrow we head to Renmark, time to wash and restock with food and water before we head to the Flinders Ranges for a few days.