45 years ago

We spent four nights in Bangkok Thailand in June 1975. It was a stopover on the way to London and 5 months of travel in Europe, the UK, Scandinavia and Russia.

During the very quiet months of March, April and May this year I finally got around to sorting through our slides (mostly poor quality) of that trip and the various reports on our adventures we sent home via barely legible hand written aerogrammes to our families.

I was 23, Rob was 24. Every dollar had to count on this trip; our goal was to see and experience as much as we could on $20 a day for the 5 months of travel. Just imagine being that young, that inexperienced, and no internet, no mobile phones, no digital camera to record it all and no Trip Adviser either.

Lots of young Aussies and Kiwis were on the move then and many of them would have done more adventurous/risky things than we did, but looking back much of what we saw and experienced at that time was extraordinary. It was a time of no mass tourism; we crawled all over Stonehenge and the Acropolis and didn't queue to see anything (except for Lenin's Tomb in Red Square) and we camped on an unspoiled Greek Island without a cruise liner in sight. We backpacked in Europe before the European Union was formed and borders were opened and currencies standardised. We were in London during a period of intense IRA (bombing) activity (by the Balcombe Street Gang) and experienced moments of terror when we got caught late at night, deep in the Underground during a bomb scare. We travelled in Russia when it was still part of the USSR under the very tight control of Brezhnev and the Communist Party and took an afternoon pass through Checkpoint Charlie into the austerity and paranoia of East Berlin. We partied in Croatia when its citizens proudly proclaimed their loyalty to the republic of Yugoslavia (in public anyway) and left Spain early because of the tension (and military guards) on the streets in the weeks before General Franco (the dictator) died. Looking back on it all, the world changed so much in the intervening years.

We arrived in steamy Bangkok on the 20th June 1975, not too long after the shocking “fall of Saigon” and the end of the war in nearby Vietnam. In Bangkok we "really felt like foreigners for the first time in our lives". We were in utter culture shock for much of our stay, but had a wonderful time especially the day we visited Ayutthaya about 70klm north of Bangkok. We used every possible means of transport: train, truck, barge and taxi and we loved seeing the countryside - rice paddies, water buffalo, every square inch of space utilised, the traditional dancers in one of the temples in the Ayutthaya complex and walking around the grounds of the old Royal summer palace.

We ended up loving our first taste of travel in SE Asia but we didn't get back to Bangkok again for another 25 years and by then it was hard for us to recapture the exoticism and authenticity of our first visit - despite our travel budget being much more generous.

 We landed in London early morning on the 24th June. Our friend Peter met us at the airport and after dropping off our luggage (3 changes of clothing each for 5 months) walked to Kensington Gardens to enjoy the sunshine. We were so excited to be in London!

 We saw all the big ticket sights in London. Rob near St Paul's Cathedral, London

 We set off on a 17 day self drive tour of England, Wales and Scotland on Wednesday 2 July (the same day our darling niece Claire was born back in Canberra). Our hire car was from Carnies car Hire in Lots Road Chelsea - a yellow Hillman Imp... it was a bit loose around the edges but it made the distance and the price was right!

Three weeks and an awful lot of miles later we embarked, along with 22 other young Aussies and Kiwis on our 35 day Transit (bus) Tour to Scandinavia and Russia.

One of our first stops was the very touristy flower market at Aalsmeer near Amsterdam and then the fishing village of Volendam where we succumbed to pressure to have our pictures taken in Dutch national dress. Now I am so glad we did as this is the only in-focus, correctly exposed (but cheesy) picture of us both on our big OS adventure!!

 Paul, John and Rob on Hardangerfjord, Norway

 Making camp on our first night in Russia - near Leningrad (now St Petersburg)

 Us in front of the famous St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square Moscow

 Rob in the grounds of the Berlin Reichstag, looking over towards "The Wall" and East Berlin beyond.

 After another break in London after the Transit Tour we set out with a plan to "see Europe" in 10 weeks or so, using our pre-purchsed Eurail Passes and youth hostels and camp sites wherever possible to keep costs down. Our plan was to travel by train, clockwise, starting in Belgium, then on to Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and ending our journey in France before returning to London in mid-November. We carried everything we needed, including our tent and camping gear on our backs. We were bona fide "backpackers".

This was me, very excited, on Thursday 4th September, straight off the hovercraft from Ramsgate, in Calais, France.

 Rob eating lunch in a Brussels park. The budget didn't extend to eating out too often.

 Eating lunch (again) by the Rhine River, Koblenz, waiting for the steamer to Mainz.

 Rob on the Rhine River cruise ..

 Just as we arrived by overnight train in beautiful Split Yugoslavia.

 Rob on beautiful Hvar Island walking from our B&B to catch the boat to Dubrovnik.

 An arty shot of Rob, taken at Dubrovnik Airport waiting for the flight to Skopje (an awful place in 1975).

 Rob resting at the Athanae Nike Temple (with modern day Athens in the background - not too polluted that day)

 Waiting for the coach (in Athens) to take us to the port of Patras (from there to Corfu).

 Me at Pompeii - on entering Mt Vesuvius canal street

 The usual touristy shot at the leaning bell tower of Pisa Cathedral

 Rob standing on the rampart of the San Guisto Castle in Trieste - looking out to the Italian coast (very strong wind that day)

 Rob in front of where we stayed in Interlaken, Switzerland.

 Sunny morning in Interlaken - walking to the railway station on the morning we left for Spain.

 Rob in the courtyard of El Greco's house, Toledo, Spain

 Rob on the beach at Cannes, south of France.

 Rob after having his hair cut and beard shaved in Nice, France - no longer the Jesus Christ look.

 Me on a cold afternoon in the Champs Elysees near the Place de la Concorde, Paris.

 Rob in front of Le Louvre on a cold Sunday morning

 View up the Avenue des Champs-Elysees from the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, Paris.

 We got back to London on Wednesday 12th November after our 10 weeks of adventures in Europe. We were sick of our 3 changes of clothing by then, being constantly on the move and living out of our packs, especially as the weather got more and more cold, wet and wintry.

It felt like luxury to settle in for the next 10 nights at the very well heated Heidi's Opal House (boarding house) at Vicarage Gate in Kensington.

 We left London (for a 3 night stopover in Singapore on our way back home to Australia) on Saturday 22 November - and back to strange sounding Aussie accents, a laconic airport welcome from the customs staff and then the long awaited joys of seeing family again!

Mungo 2

We had a great overnight stay in our simple but stylish  number 4 cabin at Mungo Lodge. The beds were perfect, the starry night sky was clear and never ending and this is what we woke to on Friday morning - everything perfectly quiet and so still ...........

 

Our Mungo package included an early (ish) morning tour of Mungo's much more recent pastoral heritage - starting with a visit to the remains of the old Zanci Station.......

Zanci was established after 1921 under the ill-fated soldier settler scheme. In this part of Western NSW, the original much larger Gol Gol station (established 1861) was broken up into 5 smaller blocks for veterans returning from WW1, including Zanci and Mungo Stations which were alongside each other - on the ancient lake bed.

Not much of Zanci homestead remains to this day....

although the outhouse (dunny) looks to be in good repair still...

old and new versions of the tankstand......

The original barn building for Zanci ....

.. and the old shearing shed, which was built from a section of the much larger Mungo Station woolshed in 1922, when the smaller soldier settler blocks were established.

We returned to the Visitor Centre area to look over the still magnificent old Mungo Station woolshed (built in 1869 from termite resistant local White Cypress Pine logs by Chinese labourers).

Our guide, Greg, really brought the woolshed alive for us with his vivid descriptions of shearing times, with 30 shearers working across 30 pens with hand shears and teams of sheepo's, rouseabouts, wool classers and balers.  Before the property was divided up after WW1, up to 50,000 sheep would be shorn in this beautiful old shed.

 

 

Mungo Station was sold to the National Parks and Wildlife Service in 1978 and Mungo National Park was created in 1979. The adjoining Zanci block was sold to the NPWS and added to the park in 1984.

We ended our tour at the Mungo Meeting Place near the Visitors Centre, a place where Mungo's Aboriginal people can gather as a community. The Meeting Place has been thoughtfully designed and features a recreation of part of the human fossil tracks that were rediscovered in the park in 2003. The footprints record some moments, frozen in time from the lives of an Aboriginal family and a group of hunters around 20,000 years ago (the largest set of ice age footprints  in the world). The real footprint fossils have been covered over with a bed of sand - and are in a secret location, free from further interference...

 

Our visit to Mungo National Park has been wonderful - an unforgettable experience!

Mungo 1

Mungo National Park is only a one and a half hour drive NE of Mildura so it was a perfect opportunity last week for us to pay a long awaited visit to this World Heritage Listed site - one of the oldest places outside of Africa to have been occupied by modern humans. The discovery of Mungo Lady (1968) and Mungo Man (1974) proved that Aboriginal people lived and practised complex ceremonies in this area over 50,000 years ago. 

Thanks to Bruce and his burly Ford Ranger we were able to travel the 80 or so kilometres of unsealed corrugated roads (+25 klm of sealed road) out to Mungo in relative ease. We were surprised at how well set up the Mungo Lodge was for visitors despite its isolated setting and the dry, tough conditions. There was a great cup of coffee waiting for us on our arrival - always a good sign.

The emus, in a fenced off area beside the front driveway, put out the welcome mat!

After lunch at the lodge we set off to the National Park Visitors Centre (still closed for COVID-19), from where we started one of the designated short walks.... It was described as the "Foreshore Walk" - across the ancient shoreline of Lake Mungo (which dried out over 20,000 years)  

 Our starting point at the Visitor's Centre ......

 Up close, the lake bed's desert vegetation has a certain beauty.

 The middle part of the walk climbs onto a low red sand dune (the old lake foreshore) where there was a grove of cypress pines, along with the usual (in this part of Australia) Mallee eucalypts.

 The introduced pademelon vines are a curse in this part of the park.

 This was an emu skeleton

Later, back at the lodge we joined about 6 other people for a sunset guided tour of the Mungo Lunette (Walls of China) - the most iconic feature of Mungo National Park. The lunette is made up of layers of sand and clay that over time have been blown up from the adjacent lakebed. They preserve thousands of "snapshots" of Aboriginal people's lives over their continuous custodianship of this land. Mungo Man and Mungo Lady were found in the lunette area. Access to this part of the park is not possible these days unless you are with an approved guide. 

It was a magical experience for us to see this on this beautiful winter evening with our well informed guide ......

  

 Shells from the ancient lake bed emerge out of the sand at every turn.

 As do small bones and stone flints from ancient tools .....

 The fine layer of dust from cars driving across the lake bed hangs around for a long time.....