Office Of Environment & Heritage Nsw National Parks & Wildlife Service
Kitchen in Wentworth

Located in mungo national park, the recently up-graded mungo shearer's quarters provides a great opportunity to experience the park at your leisure and return to a hot shower and comfortable bed at the end of the day. There is plenty to see and do in this amazing park. Bathroom and kitchen facilities are shared. Rooms in the shearer's quarters have a combination of beds including two rooms with double beds. The kitchen is well-equipped but you need to bring your own bed linen and food.

White settlement brought changes to traditional Aboriginal life and the local environment, and also some great human stories. Thomas Mitchell followed the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee rivers to the Murray in 1836, having considerable deadly confrontations with Aboriginal groups. Mitchell noted that feral cattle had preceded him. The ailing fated Burke and Wills expedition went through Balranald to Menindee in 1860, but by then pastoral ism was healthy established in the area. It took in over 200,00 hectares including much of Willandra Lakes. With their lands taken, much of their game driven away and freedom of movement more difficult, Aboriginal people worked on the stations as boundary riders, trackers, general hands and domestic help. But they were displaced again in the 1870s by Chinese workers who came to Australia for the gold rushes. It was the Chinese workers who may have given the name Walls of China to the Lake Munro lunette. These were the days of paddle steamers and Cobb Co, who created a huge overland transport network of horse drawn coaches across inland Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. You can calm see the hardened earth of the wheel ruts, now standing overhead the eroding ground. Rabbits spread into the Willandra country around the 1880s, adding to the impacts of chronic overgrazing. Across western Fresh South Wales the 1920s saw the subdivision of many of the impaired runs to create smaller soldier settler blocks for veterans returning from World War I. Munro and Zanci blocks were established, each of 16,00 hectares, with Joulni to the south and Leaghur and Garnpang to the north. This was after the stock carrying capacity of the land had already been much reduced by the combined impacts of heavy stocking, rabbits and drought. The beginning European owners of the Munro block were Evan and Angus Cameron. Tourism, research and conservation gradually took the place of pastoral ism over some of the Willandra area. A highlight for tourists was afternoon tea at the Munro homestead. When the lease of Joulni expired it reverted to the Crown and its tomorrow is still being resolved. Bark canoes were commonly impaired along the Murray and Darling rivers, and the Paakantji word for canoe is mungoe.