Rose hues of Mallee cast an eerie spell

PHILIP GAME ventures out the back of Melbourne and finds a trackless wilderness.

As shadows lengthen the sheer smooth surface of the lakes reflects perfectly the graceful, ghostly white forms of overhanging river-red gums. Kangaroos scatter through the litter of bark. Silence is disturbed only by the chatter of the galah or the cackle of an occasional kookaburra. A solitary kayak parts the waters like a knife.

The serenity of the Hattah Lakes is less than a day's drive from Melbourne's concentration of three
million people.

The Wyperfeld, Murray Sunset, Hattah Kulkyne and Mungo National Parks safeguard large tracts of
semi-desert Mallee country that sprawl across northwestern Victoria and on beyond the Murray. Vic
toria's Outback includes the Sunset Country, the last trackless wilderness on the map of Australia's most densely populated state.

After a night under canvas beside the water, or perhaps the country comfort of an authentic turn-of-
the-century hotel at Ouyen, 40km south, the next day's delights could include the delicately hued Pink
Lakes to the west, a search for the elusive Mallee fowl, or a tour of the vineyards and orange groves around Mildura.

Northwards beyond the Murray River, on unmade earth roads, lies Mungo National Park, custodian of
40,000 years of human history.

Ouyen is little more than a two-street wheatbelt town, tightening its belt in tough times. The Victoria Hotel is a two-storey original, its late Victorian iron lace spanning a wide frontage of red brick.

Inside we admire the etched glass doors opening on to dining rooms and saloons. Light switches are polished brass, and a painted, shirt-cuffed gentleman's hand points the way to the deepest and hottest baths we have enjoyed in rural Australia for some time.

Highway 12 runs straight as a die from Ouyen towards the South Australian state border, flashing by tiny outposts like Galah, Walpeup, Underbool and Linga. The Pink Lakes lie 13km north of Linga.

The salt lakes take their remarkable hues from tiny algae, reflected in waters of a delicate rose or coral under a huge sky crowded with fluffy snow-white cumulus.

The crumbling remains of tramways, the rusting implements and the eroding salt stockpiles all evoke the back-breaking drudgery of carving out a livelihood in the age of steam and horsepower.

All around are huge tracts of sand-dune country and tangled sage-green scrub. Deep in these bushlands the Mallee fowl toils incessantly to build a natural humidicrib for its mate's eggs, precisely temperature-controlled.

In the Wyperfeld National Park, southwest of Ouyen, the lakes shown on maps are open woodlands, jumping with red and western grey kangaroos. Elsewhere, bare sand dunes are criss-crossed before dawn by the tracks of creatures great and small. Lake Brimin, beside the main campsite, has been dry since 1921, a bowl of gently waving grasses. A family of emus browse amid the sedge, ungainly dark shapes with stick legs, long necks and sneering beaks.

Lake Brambruk, too, is dry and has been for many years. It is now an open woodland of rough-barked black box and river red gums.

Brambruk forms a link in a chain along Outlet Creek, part of a complex lake system holding water only at 20-year intervals.

The grassy lake beds erupt with native parrots. Pink-breasted grey galahs and white sulphur-crested
cockatoos shriek as the human invaders press forward, while delicately hued pink and white Major
Mitchell parrots protest less stridently.

Iridescent green parrots dart in pairs between the high branches, contrasting with the green backdrop. A mob of western greys bounds off into the distance. Sensing our intrusion, some freeze to merge imperceptibly into the backdrop of the black box bark.

A pod-shaped scar on an ancient but imposing river red gum bears witness to habitation in wetter times more than a century ago, when the Wotjobaluk people built a canoe to travel across the lake's waters.

Last century's European settlers left their traces, too, like the poignant headstone of a pioneer family's infant, buried beside a dune, and the faded wooden sign pointing the way to an early out-station.

Back on the bitumen, the Calder Highway cruises into Mildura, a town founded by the two Chaffey brothers, pioneering irrigators from California.

The vineyards and orange groves on either side of the road are the most attractive aspect of this outpost of 60s suburbia.

Beyond the Murray the somnolent township of Wentworth is a welcome contrast: wide streets, spreading pepper trees and pelicans circling contentedly above the junction of the Murray and the Darling, the two main arms of the only navigable river system on this driest of continents.

The Mallee country now stretches up into the far west of New South Wales. By negotiating graded dirt
roads for three hours, we reach Mungo National Park where the Walls of China, a lunette or windblown
dune of white sands and clays that has eroded into gulches and gullies, rears up beyond the ancient bed
of Lake Mungo.

The evidence of 40,000 years of human habitation is half-buried in these sands hides, the strata tracing
out a history of climatic change. At sunset the white walls glow as if irradiated across the darkening
saltbush of the lake floor.

Motel-style accommodation is available in the nearby Mungo Lodge, but hardier visitors can bunk down in the shearers' quarters.

CASENOTES:


BEST TIME TO GO: April to November. Wildflowers bloom around September. Walkers need to carry sunhats and plenty of drinking water. On day or overnight walks carry a large-scale map and a compass because there are few landmarks.

BE PREPARED: Travellers to Mungo should stock up on fuel and supplies at Mildura, Buronga or Pooncarie and check road conditions with the District Office, NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service, Sturt Highway (PO Box 318) Buronga NSW 2648, ph (00613) 5023 1278. Shearers' cabins at Mungo can also be booked here. Mungo Lodge, Mungo National Park via Mildura 3500, ph
(00613) 5029 7297.

PARK CONTACTS: Parks Victoria, 253 Eleventh St, Mildura 3500. Ph (00613) 5023 3000.

Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, RSD, Hattah 3501. Ph (00613) 5029 3253.

Wyperfeld National Park, RMB 1465, Yaapeet 3424. Ph (00613) 5395 7221

Pink Lakes Ranger-in-Charge, Murray-Sunset National Park, PO Underbool 3509. Ph (00613)
5094 6267.

Links:


Welcome to Australia

Tourism Victoria

Parks Victoria