A geologist by training, in the summer of 1974 Jim Bowler was surveying the dry beds of Willandra Lakes looking for evidence of Ice Age rain fall levels when, of all things, the weather took a turn for the worse.
With heavy rainfall interrupting his field excursions, Jim waited for the onslaught to stop before eagerly returning to the yet-to-be-named Lake Mungo.
Having discovered human remains here five years earlier, Jim trawled the drenched, and rapidly drying, landscape for signs fresh remains may have eroded out following the rainfall.
It was by following the boundary of a distinctive soil layer that in the late afternoon Jim was there as the sun caught a tiny patch of something white, gleaming brightly. It was the dome of a human skull—it was the discovery of a lifetime.