This was the high point of our second day in Sydney, February 22nd. Our new best friend Cynthia (left) treated us to lunch at the Manly Beach Skiff Club, along with new friends Lynda Millin and Holly Unity, after which we walked over to Manly Beach proper and Connie and I got ourselves wet while paying our respects to Mama Ocean!
Five days later, here we are at the Pacific Ocean, three hours east of Canberra, recovering from a wild and wonderful adventure deep into the blazing desert, all the way to Mungo Lake, New South Wales, where we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the 1974 emergence of the perfectly preserved 42,000-year-old skeleton of Mungo Man, a leader of a very advanced society of modern-day humans who conducted the burial with great ceremony, including anointing the body with red ochre, a sacred substance that does not occur within hundreds of miles of this remote burial site. Professor Jim Bowler, the “discoverer” of Mungo Man, now 94 years old, and some 42 others (Aboriginals and “whitefellas” alike) were part of the anniversary event, which Connie and I had the privilege of filming in depth. More on this subject later!
At Mungo Lake, we encountered hundreds of wild kangaroos and a family of about a dozen emus. Quite a welcoming committee. Speaking of welcoming committees, our arrival in Sydney a few day earlier was quite extraordinary! We experienced first-hand the hospitality of the Australians, and were wined and dined and given the royal treatment, before being put on a 9-hour train journey into the back-of-beyond.
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