THE LONG SILENCE

14 Aug

Lake Mungo, New South Wales

Lake Mungo is a terrible place to go if you're looking for noise. Luckily, I wasn't.

*Lake Mungo National Park road sign overlooking the vast western New South Wales landscape.*

There is a particular kind of silence that exists in wide, open country. Not the absence of sound exactly. There are birds calling from the rafters of the old woolshed, wind moving through dry grass, the crunch of gravel under tyres and occasionally the low rumble of another vehicle somewhere in the distance.

But underneath all of that is something else. A stillness. Lake Mungo feels enormous. The sky occupies almost everything. Roads disappear into the horizon. Emus move through the scrub. Kangaroos appear between the saltbush and watch for a moment before slipping quietly away again.

And everywhere there are traces.

Of water.

Of weather.

Of animals.

Of people.

This is not empty country.

Old windmill standing in the wide landscape of Lake Mungo National Park

Stories worth pulling over for - Car stopped on a long dirt road through Lake Mungo National Park

Old windmill standing in what was the lake bed of Lake Mungo

wo swallows perched together escaping the afternoon sun inside the Mungo Woolshed

Kangaroos watching from native scrub at Lake Mungo National Park

Two emus walking through the dry grasslands of Lake Mungo National Park

Small white wildflowers growing in sandy soil at Lake Mungo

Kangaroos sitting quietly among the scrub at Lake Mungo National Park

A distant vehicle travelling along a vast dirt road at Lake Mungo

Mungo National Park lies within the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area and is a place of profound significance to the Ngyiampaa, Mutthi Mutthi and Southern Paakantyi people. Human history here reaches back more than 40,000 years. Perhaps that is what makes the silence feel different. You become aware that the landscape existed long before you arrived and will continue long after you leave.

As a photographer, places like this make me slow down. The obvious photograph is the immense landscape — the strange eroded formations, the pale earth and that endless Australian sky. The lunettes known as the Walls of China have been shaped from layers of sand and clay by wind and water over an immense span of time.

*Eroded lunette landscape at Lake Mungo with the Walls of China in the distance*

But it was the smaller things that kept catching my attention. Light slipping through the boards of an old shed. Swallows talking to one another along a beam. Tiny white flowers growing from sandy ground. A windmill standing alone on the plain. Two emus travelling together. A kangaroo almost disappearing into the scrub. And a car on a dirt road, momentarily reminding you just how very small we are out there.

Photography gives me permission to look at places this way. Not simply to record what is there, but to notice how a place feels. Lake Mungo felt ancient. Beautiful. A little strange. And extraordinarily still.

I arrived with a camera. I left thinking about time.