THESE UNEARTHLY PLAINS

THE CORDIAL COUNTRYFOLK have learned to identify the strangers by their transport. Not what they arrive in exactly – lustrous all-wheel drives – but by what they carry: a kayak on the roof racks perhaps; maybe a jet ski lolling behind; pool noodles pressed up against the rear window like a kidnapped rainbow.

And then comes the question, incredibly, that locals swear they are asked often: “Not much water in the lake at the moment?”

The unenlightened pleasure-seekers are politely schooled on the reasons why they won’t be able to go for a paddle in Lake Mungo today. Or tomorrow. Or even this time next year, rain or no rain.

Turns out they are about 10 millennia late for a dip, give or take. That’s estimated to be when most of the now World Heritage-listed, 240,000-hectare Willandra Lakes region permanently vaporised. Eighteen thousand years ago would have been even better for them; that’s the last time the now-fossilised Lake Mungo was in full flood – a Pleistocene jet skier’s wet dream.

To be fair to the aforementioned out-of-towners, even all-knowing, all-seeing Google Maps disseminates digital disinformation, ‘blueing out’ Lake Mungo like it’s a colossal water-ski park.

So why drag yourself to an outback ‘lake’ that’s not? Well, just as swiftly as local