Graham Clarke – tour guide

Graham Clarke is a traditional Parkantji man, and a tour guide in the Mungo National Park.

Graham is clear - Mungo is a very special place – and 'the only way for people to really understand Mungo National Park is to come out and have a look.'

Graham was born in Broken Hill and lived in Wilcannia. He is part of the Stolen Generation, and was taken as a 12-year-old to a boys' home in northern New South Wales. He was adopted, but kept in contact with his sisters and, when he was 18, he headed home to western Victoria.

Graham lives in Wentworth, a small town that is located at the junction of the Darling and Murray rivers. He has been coming to the park since he was a child, and has been sharing his love of the park with visitors for the past 16 years.

Mungo National Park is the traditional country of the Parkantji people. Two other tribes were invited to share the lands - the Mutti Mutti tribe (from the south) and the Nyempa tribe (from the north).

The name 'Mungo' came from settlers who came from Scotland and named their station after Saint Mungo (also known as Kentigern). The park became so well known as 'Mungo' that the elders decided not to revert back to its traditional name.

Mungo bears evidence of the longest continuous inhabitation by a modern human group, at approximately 60,000 years. Mungo woman is the oldest cremated modern human burial site in the world at approximately 40,000 years old, and debate rages about the age of Mungo man.

Graham remembers, as a teenager, people talking about Mungo and the discovery of skeletons there in 1968.
'…a lot of them sort of wanted to keep the place a secret, which they did for thousands of years.'

An early riser, Graham loves sunrises and sunsets. He organises his tours to run at sunset, to beat the heat, and catch the magnificent changing colours of the full moon and the sun.

And visitors are, rightly, impressed with Mungo. Graham explains the semi-arid desert environment and the history, and says the experience 'changes them for life'.