Guided small group motorcycle tour of World Heritage sites in Victoria and South Australia

Guided small group motorcycle tour of World Heritage sites in Victoria and South Australia

A Guided small group Australian outback tour for mature and senior travellers is a journey of learning around the Southern edges of the Murray Darling basin and up to the upper southern part of this complex river basin north of Mildura. It provides the traveller on this escorted small group tour of South Australia the learning opportunity to gain an insight into Aboriginal habitation land management over some 40,000 years and then more recently the veneer of European settlement in the last two centuries on the landscape. It is part of a portfolio of Australian Outback tours offered by Odyssey for like minded people who are curious about Outback Australia. The itinerary over the 15 days is Adelaide to Adelaide, heading south east initially across Southern Australia to Victoria and Port Fairy. The group then continues up through central Western Victoria to Hamilton and then Naracoote and on into the lower part of the Murray Darling basin in Mildura, to Broken Hill and then back into South Australia to Adelaide via Burns.

This, like all Odyssey Traveller small group motorcycle tours is limited to 8 people.

This escorted small group tour has an interest in both Aboriginal and European settlement history. Over the period of this escorted small group tour the itinerary takes you to visit three UNSECO World Heritage Sites, two with human cultural significance, one of mammal significance; understand and appreciate the complexity and features of the Murray Darling Basin through some spectacular scenery.The program skirts around the edges of the "Aussie Outback", but is not a outback adventure for the traveller. Whilst the Murray-Darling begins in Queensland, by the time the river system reaches South Australia it represents one the most complex river systems in Australia against which modern agriculture has placed substantial stress. We see the historic and contemporary evidence of this in Mildura and the lakes around Menindee. and the many landscape changes including the Mallee, observing and learning about the river woodland galleries, arid lands, saltbush plains, agriculture practices; as well as the mining and railway history of Southern Australia.

The Itinerary

This small group escorted tour with your tour guide meets in Adelaide where the trip begins and ends 14 days later. With your tour guide this unique Australia tour departs on day 2 for Mount Gambier crossing over the Adelaide hills and then following the coast initially and pausing the journey for lunch in Robe. The group overnights in Mount Gambier and then continues onto Port Fairy in Victoria. In the afternoon we enjoy have a 1/2 day tour walking around this coastal small town learning about its history, the relationship to Melbourne and the curiosity of the mahogany ship..... as well as an introduction to the shipwreck coast.

Passing through the Mallee

In Victoria, south-western New South Wales, and South Australia, this tour passes through swathes of mallee country. ‘Mallee woodlands’ have been listed by the Australian Department of Environment and Energy as one of the 32 ‘Major Vegetation Groups’ of Australia. Mallee country is defined by the predominance of the mallee eucalyptus, a stocky eucalyptus with several stems, which grows on semi-arid soil. Mallee country spreads in a belt across the south of Australia, centring around the Murray River in western Victoria and eastern South Australia, the Eyre Peninsula west of Adelaide, and the 'wheat belt' of Western Australia.

For European settlers, the mallee was a 'dreadful country', desolate and inhospitable, but Aboriginal Australians made a home in these areas for at least 40, 000 years. For the numerous Aboriginal groups who inhabited the Victorian/South Australian mallee, the Murray River was a source of life, providing fishing, meat, eggs, and fibrous water plants. The roots of kumpung were steamed in an earth oven, creating a carbohydrate starch similar to flour, which was in turn used to bake cakes. Kumpung was also used to create twine, which was used for fishing nets, the weaving of bags, belts, and headbands, and traded for stone axeheads and myall spears at great gatherings. Murray River peoples also used fire to create pasture mosaics.

Though each group held custodianship over particular lands, the Murray River peoples shared an overlapping culture, with closely-related languages and spiritual beliefs. People around the Murray River believed in an all-Father who was the creator of all things, though he bore different names to different peoples – Bunjil the eaglehawk to the Wotjobaluk and Kulin people, Tha-tha-pulli to the Wadi Wadi, and Tulong to the Dadi Dadi.

UNESCO World Heritage Site: The Budj Bim Cutural Landscape

The following day we travel to Australia 's latest UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Budj Bim Cutural Landscape. The landscape was shaped by volcanic activity, but about 6,500 year ago local Aboriginal people on their Gudityama Country started to alter the existing drainage pattern with extensive channels and earthworks to permit eel production for most of the year.

From at least 6,600 years ago, the Gunditjmara created an extensive and complex aquaculture network where modified channels diverted water and kooyang (short-finned eel) into holding ponds. Here kooyang grew fat and were harvested with woven baskets set in weirs built from volcanic rocks and wood lattice structures. Dating back thousands of years, the area shows evidence of a large, settled Aboriginal community systematically farming and smoking eels for food and trade in what is considered to be one of Australia ’s earliest and largest aquaculture ventures. The local Aboriginal people on their Gudityama Country built houses and managed the landscape as opposed to the traditional nomadic lifestyle of many Aboriginal communities.

This escorted small group tour has a guided 1/2 day tour with a local guide of the Budj Bim cultural landscape. This is a unique insight into Aboriginal culture.

This afternoon the itinerary has this group tour continue its trip across Victoria to Hamilton.

Hamilton is a regional service centre and we break here for the night. There is the opportunity to visit the The Sir Reginald Ansett Transport Museum, Centrepieces of the display are a Fokker Universal aircraft, similar to the one used on the first Ansett flight in 1936, and the 1928 Studebaker. Other memorabilia includes documents from the early days of the Ansett empire. The museum has a complete set of flight attendant uniforms and an array of smaller items to keep the nostalgia buffs busy.

The Naracoorte Caves Park

From Hamilton we travel to Naracoorte for an afternoon visit to this UNESCO World heritage site for fossils. The Naracoorte Caves Park is one of only three fossil sites in Australia to be given an official World Heritage Listing. There is a two simple reasons why the caves are so important:

They are caves on a flat landscape and therefore were caves that both animals and humans fell into and couldn’t get out of – nature created them as traps. The animals that fell into the holes and died in the caves became a unique wildlife record of such exotica as giant kangaroos, large marsupial lions and giant wombats which once roamed the area.

In the case of the Victoria Fossil Cave a staggering 130 different species of mammals, reptiles, birds and frogs have been discovered. It is a repository of near-perfect fossilized skeletons of ancient megafauna of Australia's native wildlife. The bones of Megafauna species such as Thylacoleo carnifex Marsupial Lion, Thylacine, Zygomaturus and sthenurine kangaroo the have been found in the fossil deposits.The fossils, dating back 500,000 years, have been recognised as one of the richest collections of Pleistocene fossils in the world. There are 28 caves in the area and four caves which are open for inspection. With a tour guide, we enjoy an escorted tour to learn about the most important fossils found in the National park.

The Caves preserve the most complete fossil record we have for this period of time, spanning several ice ages, the arrival of humans in the area and the extinction of Australia ’s iconic Megafauna roughly 60,000 years ago.

Balranald

This escorted group tour now heads north to Ouyen and Balranald travelling through the flat land of wheat fields and grazing sheep.

Balranald is located on the western edge of the vast Hay plain initially settled as a place once used to ford the Murrumbidgee River. Today it is a service centre for the surrounding irrigation district. The Heritage Park in Market Street draws the historic interest of the area with the old gaol, the school house and an historical museum.

The following day our itinerary has this escorted small group tour of South Australia heading into the Australian outback. Pasture gives way to the desert landscape as this group tour travels up to the Mungo National Park where we spend the next two nights. A unique desert setting for an outback experience.

Mungo National park

Mungo National Park has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site for some 40 years.

For travellers on this guided tour the fascinating part when looking at the landscape of Mungo and the Willandra Lakes is that it is a geological window where this small group tour can look into the deep past of old Australia. Buried here in thick layers of sand and clay are the tell-tale signs of how the climate, waters and landforms have changed over the last 100,000 years. And for at least 45,000 years humans have shared that journey. The ancient Willandra people thrived with the abundance of the lakes, then adapted to drier, hungrier times of the last ice age and survived to the present day. Their story can be discovered in the folds of the land, along with their fireplaces, burials, middens and tools. The people of Lake Mungo and the Willandra Lakes have a long past that is important to the whole world in archaeological studies and human evolution.

The history of these fossil lakes is deeply entwined with what has happened in the dunefields, rivers and mountains hundreds of kilometres away. A geological stable region sediment from the Queensland mountains has washed through the Australian outback and accumulated, piling up like the pages in a history book, waiting to be read in this national park. But here it is not just the recent geologically record that is important.

Lake Mungo is one of the most important archaeological sites in Australia. A unique set of circumstances have created a landscape where it is possible to get an insight into Aboriginal life some 40,000 years ago. At that time Lake Mungo was one of series of large, deep, interlocking lakes teeming with large fish. It was 20 km long, 10 km wide and 15 m deep. On the lake's eastern shore sand dunes provided sheltered campsites. Not surprisingly Aboriginal hunters and gatherers settled on the shores, established campsites and enjoyed a healthy diet of fish, crustaceans and animals which came to drink at the water's edge.

About 16,000 years ago the lakes dried up leaving a 25 km-long sand dune, called a lunette, which stretched along the eastern edge of the lake and was, in places, up to 40 metres high. When shepherds, many of whom were Chinese, arrived in the area in the 1860s they called the lunette the Walls of China.

Lake Mungo's importance are threefold.

• It has "one of the longest continual records of Aboriginal life in Australia " having been occupied for over 50,000 years.
• The skeletons found in the sands of the lunette are the "oldest known fully modern humans outside Africa" and,
• the skeleton of Mungo Woman (or Mungo I as she is officially known), which has been radiocarbon dated to around 40,000 years ago, "has provided the oldest evidence of ritual cremation in the world."

As a small group touring the lake and the National park, take time whilst at Lake Mungo to gaze across the dry lake bed to contemplate the idea that once, tens of thousands of years ago, here in the Australian outback was a important meeting place for the indigenous Aborigines. Aborigines painted themselves with ochre, ate fish and mussels from the lake, buried and cremated their dead, cooked meat in simple hearths and ovens, sewed skins to make cloaks and shaped bones and stones into tools and weapons. If you want to glimpse what life was like for Aborigines when our European ancestors were still living in caves then Lake Mungo is a genuinely unforgettable experience.

About 40,000 years ago, Mungo Lady lived around the shores of Lake Mungo. A time of plenty was coming to an end at Willandra Lakes, when the basins were full of water and teeming with life. The human population was at its peak, and Mungo Lady was the daughter of many mothers - the generations before her that had lived at Lake Mungo since the Dreamtime. She collected bush tucker such as fish, shellfish, yabbies, wattle seeds and emu eggs, nourished her culture and taught her daughters the women's lore.

When Mungo Lady died, we know her family mourned for her. Her body was cremated, the remaining bones were crushed, burned again and then buried.

About 42,000 -40,000 years ago out here in what is now the Australian outback, Mungo Man lived around the shores of Lake Mungo with his family. A time of abundance in the Willandra Lakes system was drawing to a close, but he could still hunt many species of game, including some of the soon-to-be-extinct megafauna. Mungo Man cared for his Countryand kept safe the special men's knowledge. By his lore and ritual activity, he kept the land strong and his culture alive.

When he was young Mungo Man lost his two lower canine teeth, possibly knocked out in a ritual. He grew into a man nearly 1.7m in height. Over the years his molar teeth became worn and scratched, possibly from eating a gritty diet or stripping the long leaves of water reeds with his teeth to make twine. As Mungo Man grew older his bones ached with arthritis, especially his right elbow, which was so damaged that bits of bone were completely worn out or broken away. The condition of arthritis was so advanced that he would not have been able to fully extend his arm or turn his hand properly. Such wear and tear is typical of people who have used a woomera to throw spears over many years.

Mungo Man reached a good age for the hard life of a hunter-gatherer, and died when he was about 50. His family mourned for him, and carefully buried him in the lunette, on his back with his hands crossed in his lap, and sprinkled with red ochre. Mungo Man is the oldest known example in the world of such a ritual.

When Mungo Lady and Mungo Man turned up some 40 years ago they rocked the scientific community. They have been dated to 42,000 years old - the oldest human remains in Australia and some of the oldest modern humans in the world outside Africa.

And when 20,000 year old footprints of the Willandra people were found in 2003, they also rocked archaeological records. They are the only Pleistocene footprints in Australia and the most numerous yet found anywhere in the world.

Ancient footprints

A key feature of the Meeting Place interpreatation centre in the UNESCO World heritage site National park is the re-creation of part of the ancient human tracks that were re-discovered in 2003. The footprints record some frozen moments in the lives of Aboriginal people who travelled across a damp claypan around 20,000 years ago. This is the largest known collection in the world of such ancient human footprints.

Today these fragile relics are specially protected. The footprints are extremely precious to the people who are directly descended from those who made them so long ago, and they are important to all humanity. To let everyone experience something of the wonder of the tracks, a section has been reproduced as an accurate replica at the Meeting Place.

These finds are remarkable enough in the Australian archeological record, but perhaps the most important thing about the Willandra Lakes is how such discoveries can be connected with the landscape and climate. Places like Mungo are rare, where changes in an environment can be matched with how people have lived there in a continuous record across vast ages.

The scientific evidence shows that Aboriginal people have lived at Mungo for at least 45,000 years. This is the dated age of the oldest stone artefacts that have been found so far, and represents a lineage that extends back over some 2000 generations. But many Aboriginal people say they have been here even longer, reaching back into the Dreamtime, perhaps forever. The long history of occupation at Mungo has combined with ideal conditions for the preservation of some types of relics to create an archaeological treasure house complete with Aboriginal rock art.

Today, the Paakantji, the Mutthi Mutthi, the Ngiyampaa and all Aboriginal people hold their Willandra ancestors and their story as precious gifts to be shared with all people.

The ability to go so far back in human settlement over such a large area makes for a truly fascinating and touching visit in the Mungo National park as part of this unique Australia tour. This escorted small group tour spends 2 days with the tourleader and local guides exploring and learning about the park, its unique wildlife and sees an amazing sunset, we hope.. in Australia's outback.

After Mungo National Park the group heads to Mildura, a town on the Murray River.

Mildura, a town on the Murray River.

The area is thought to have been occupied by the Kureinji and Latje Latje Aborigines before white settlement. There is also evidence of the Paakantji, Ngyiampaa and Mutthi Mutthi tribal groups living in the area and their presence has been dated to 40,000 years ago. The first European in the vicinity was probably Charles Sturt who passed the present townsite when he travelled along the Murray River in early 1830. He reached Lake Alexandrina in February, 1830.

In this area of Northern Victoria the major event in agricultural settlement occurred late in the 19th century as the Victorian government considered irrigation options after the harsh drought of of the 1870's. Two Canadians, William and George Chaffey who had been successful in setting up agricultural irrigation in California arrived at the invitation of the Government. The offer of £300,000 from the Victorian government as payment for the task of improving Mildura and the Mallee region over the next twenty years may have been a good inducement as well. This escorted tour learns how the Chaffeys planned Mildura like a town in California. The streets running east-west were given numerical names (First to Twenty-first Streets) and avenues which ran north-south were given North American names (San Mateo, Ontario). The town's main thoroughfare (Deakin Avenue) is reputedly the longest straight avenue in the country. They did not stop at street names. There was a plan to run trams through the town which meant the streets were designed to be particularly wide and the central median strip was enhanced with a band rotunda, a fountain, gum and palm trees all of which were planted by William Chaffey. In 1887 the new town was heavily promoted which resulted in the arrival of 3,300 settlers, many from Britain, by 1891. This was despite the fact that the nearest railway was 163 km away. The settlers cleared the land and dug irrigation channels. The Chaffey brothers imported two enormous engines for the pumping stations and water was raised from the Murray to irrigate the fields. So successful was the project that by 1893 the first fruit harvests were being transported to the markets in Melbourne. Problems with transportation resulted in the rapid development of a dried fruit industry and being on the Murray River meant the town quickly became an important river port.

Like many of the model towns in California, Mildura was alcohol free. It wasn't until 1918 that the first hotel, the Grand Hotel, was opened for business.

In spite of initial success the town suffered major economic problems (drought, plagues of rabbits, transportation problems) and by 1894 Chaffey Brothers Ltd was bankrupt. George Chaffey returned to the USA while his brother, William, remained and went on to establish a winery at Irymple in 1888 and become the town's first mayor in 1920. The group spend time visiting Rio Vista, the historic house built by Charles Chaffey to continue this story.

Today the Mildura region, with a population of over 50,000, generates nearly $3 billion in Gross Regional Product per annum. 17% of this is agriculture and 11% manufacturing.

Our second full day in Mildura this small group travels to the junction of the Darling and Murray Rivers at Wentworth. This small group escorted tour learn about the river traffic and take a short trip on a paddle steamer along the Murray including a lock gate passage. The group also visit the old jail designed by the Architect of the Sydney Chief post office and other historic buildings in Wentworth time permitting.

Broken Hill & Menindee

From Mildura our itinerary takes this small group Australian outback tour up to Broken Hill, an iconic destination in outback Australia. The tour stops at Silverton just before Broken Hill. Silverton's mining days are long over, but it has a place in the folklore of followers of the Mad Max films. The following day we have a full day tour, walking Broken Hill, before travelling out to Menindee and the lakes adjacent to the Darling River. We visit the places where Burke and Willsstayed before heading into the unchartered outback as well as visiting one of the major sheep stations now a national park.

Peterborough Trains and Burra

After two nights in Broken hill this escorted small group tour of South Australia heads back into Southern Australia, towards Burra via Peterborough. Our first break on today's guided tour is at Peterborough and to learn about this infamous railway intersection important to the town with its multiple gauges of rail track as an impediment to a Australia tour by rail or the transporting of goods.

Peterborough is a rare railway town where, because state governments could not agree on a standarised railway gauge, three railway gauges (broad - 5'3", standard 4'8 1/2" and narrow 3'6'') once met from Sydney and the east coast, with the rail heading from Western Australia and Perth and of course South Australia. The town became hugely important as a railway link between the iron ore mines at Broken Hill and the iron and steel processing at Port Pirie. At its height over one hundred trains a day were passing through the town. It is therefore hardly surprising that it has a museum in a railway carriage and its prime tourist attraction is the "Steamtown" Heritage Rail Centre. It was 1970 when the first Sydney to Perth train, the indian pacific, passed through the crossing. By the start of the 20th century there where 70 trains a dayjust from Broken Hill passing along the track. And the Ghan started using the line from 1929 to go from Adelaide to Darwin. We spend time exploring the history of this town, now a shell of its former days.

We carry onto the state heritage town of Burra where we spend the night. Famous for the film Breaker Morant, copper mining, and beer! We have a tour of important historic sites in Burra, though like Peterborough this small group touring Burra is another Australian outback town with a long history of European settlement.

Burra, which calls itself 'An Historic Copper Town and the Merino Capital of the World', is a unique township. It did not become an official entity until 1940 when the tiny, separate mining communities of Aberdeen, New Aberdeen, Kooringa, Llwchwr, Redruth and Graham were drawn together under the name Burra. It was declared a State Heritage town in 1994 because of its outstanding historic buildings and the opportunity it offers for the visitor to understand a little of what life was like in a 19th century copper mining town.

Return to Adelaide

The following day our small group touring program has us continue on our journey past the Barossa Valley and on to Adelaide to complete the circuit for this Australian tour. Odyssey Traveller offers a collection of Australian outback tours to the curious traveller with an all inclusive tour price.

Articles about Australia published by Odyssey Traveller:

• The Kimberley: A Definitive Guide
• Uncovering the Ancient History of Aboriginal Australia
• Aboriginal Land Use in the Mallee
• Understanding Aboriginal Aquaculture
• Mallee and Mulga: Two Iconic and Typically Inland Australian Plant Communities (By Dr. Sandy Scott).
• The Australian Outback: A Definitive Guide

For all the articles Odyssey Traveller has published for mature aged and senior travellers, click through on this link.

External articles to assist you on your visit to Australia:

• UNESCO: Budj Bim Cultural Landscape and Willandra Lakes Region
• Finding Mungo Man: the moment Australia’s story suddenly changed
• A 42,000-Year-Old Man Finally Goes Home
• Fish traps and stone houses: New archaeological insights into Gunditjmara use of the Budj Bim lava flow of southwest Victoria over the past 7000 years
• ‘A big jump’: People might have lived in Australia twice as long as we thought
• Mildura, Victoria
• Righting the wrongs of the Sunraysia sultana’s confusing history
• Burra, South Australia: Travel guide and things to do