Long weekend in Mungo – by Mark Newton
For the June long weekend, I wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny. New South Wales didn’t have any warm sunny places, but some friends were planning a trip to some extremely cold and mostly sunny places. Started making plans on Friday afternoon, departed on Saturday morning.
Mungo Lodge
Aircraft parking is next to the cabins. Each cabin has air conditioning for the summer, when it can reach 45ºC during the day; And excellent heating with electric blankets for the winter. There’s also space for campsites and fire pits if you like being more exposed to the elements than I like to be. The site is off-grid. 100% of their water comes from a nearby rain catchment.
100% of their electricity comes from solar with diesel generator augmentation. There’s no cellphone service, no internet access, no in-room WiFi.
The restaurant is excellent, but during COVID-19 they’re only taking small bookings, so you’ll need to plan ahead or cook your own food on the BBQ. Slow-cooked lamb shank. Baileys Cheesecake. Whatever Cabernet Sauvignon Malcolm ordered.
The lake is about 30km from one side to the other. It has been dry for 19,000 years, but the fine sand in the lake bed is always shifting due to the winds and rains, and new objects are always surfacing and moving.
This shell (below) is from a marine animal that could not possibly have existed at any point in the last twenty millenia.
The shadows lengthen as the sun sets
Departing on Sunday morning. The plan is to head for Jerilderie, but thickening low cloud turning to fog enroute suggests a diversion to Hay.
We made Hay while the sun wasn’t shining.
Murrumbidgie River. Last time I was here was a year ago, during the trip where we collected Pandora the pug puppy from Adelaide and drove her back to Sydney. The river was completely empty then, not even a puddle. What a difference a year makes.
Lunch at The Convent. If the nuns were still here, they’d have rapped the knuckles of the author of this sign with a ruler for misspelling “Raisin.”
Lunch was Lasagne with chips and salad, which is more Australian than Italian when served in that combination.
Finley solar farm.
Parked for the night YYWG
Yarrawonga
COVID-19 regulations in Victoria limit group sizes in restaurants to 10. There are 11 of us, so having flown for hours to reach Victoria, we walked across the river back to NSW for dinner at the RSL.
Porterhouse, medium, pepper sauce and vegetables. Chocolate and caramel baked cheesecake. House shiraz.
Monday Morning. Lovely flying weather. -2ºC at 7am. Ice all over the canopy cover and the wings, even in the sunny bits. The entire trip was freezing cold from the get-go, but Yarrawonga was something else. Pepper steak pie and a cappuccino for breakfast.
The group. This photo was taken immediately before the 50% of the fleet equipped with carburettors ran their batteries flat trying to get their engines started. Ian from the Douglas Aviation hangar opposite came to the rescue with a jumpstart battery.
Gundagai
Burrinjuck
Yass
About 150 knots indicated most of the way home, Yarrawonga to Bankstown in 1.9 hours. Haulin’ ass over Yass. Landed at Bankstown and locked the Aluminum Mistress in the hangar about 2 hours before the weather turned to shit. Perfect timing!
