The Unique Willandra Lakes

A Place of Unique Beauty and Wonder

The Willandra Lakes covers 2,400 km2 of a semi‐arid landscape mosaic in the Murray Basin area of far south‐ western New South Wales. It comprises dried saline lake bed plains vegetated with saltbush communities, fringing sand dunes and woodlands with grassy understoreys. The region contains a system of Pleistocene lakes, formed over the last two million years. These lakes are now dry. The diagram below shows the location and the lake system.

Willandra Lakes was placed on the World Heritage list in 1981 because:

• It is a geologically unique area of dry lakebeds rich in fossils.
• It includes the world's oldest cremation site (26,000 years old) and remains of settlement up to 40,000 years ago (agricultural use, stone tools).
• It is the most important site in Australia to observe the period when the giant marsupials became extinct and the human race became dominant.

Mungo National Park is part of this World Heritage area and covers about two‐thirds of Lake Mungo and includes the spectacular parts of the Walls of China lunette.

The remaining area comprises pastoral leasehold properties. Joulni Station at the southern end of the Mungo lunette is of cultural significance to the three Traditional Tribal Groups.

There are five large, interconnected, dry lake basins and 14 smaller basins varying in area from 6 to 350 km2.

Aborigines lived on the shores of the lakes for at least 50,000 years, and the remains of a 40,000 year old female found in the dunes of Lake Mungo are believed to be the oldest ritual cremation site in the world.

Take a look at these other interesting landforms.... 

Created by the Forces of Nature

The Willandra Lakes are the product of weathering, climate and humans:

• The region is made up of a series of dry lake basins that were originally fed from the northern end by Willandra Creek.
• They range in size from Lake Granpung, covering over 500 square kilometres, to small depressions that were little more than seasonal ponds.
• As the supply of water diminished the lakes gradually dried out, becoming increasingly saline from south to north.
• On the eastern side of each of the lakes there are vast crescent-shaped lunettes made up of layers of sediment deposited between 40 000 and 15 000 years ago.
• The layered composition, including clays and fossil soils, distinguish lunettes from sand dunes.
• One of the most spectacular series of lunettes, know as the Walls of China (as shown in the photograph below) is found on the eastern side of Lake Mungo.
• The Willandra Lakes region is particularly important because it has not been glaciated. Whereas sediments in other regions have been removed by glacial processes., here they have remained undisturbed for many thousands of years.

Wind and Water, with a little help from Humans

~ Erosion of Lunettes ~ 

Over the past 100 to 200 years erosion has been accelerated by the removal of vegetation due to grazing. Although little rain falls in the area, when it does it washes away the soft sands and clays, creating the ribbed surfaces and gullies that characterised the region. The diagram below shows how the lunette of Willandra Lakes have been formed.

Australia is waiting for you....