Talk:Willandra Lakes Region

History

This history section includes items which are irrelevant to the region, eg a camp of Chinese nationals at Narrandera. Gol Gol is mentioned without being clear when this is Gol Gol Station (relevant) or if this is Gol Gol Township, which would be irrelevant. The piece has been linked to Gol Gol township, which looks like an error.

Description

The article says 150 km long by 40 km wide and runs generally in a north-south direction from Lake Mulurulu in the north to Lake Pringle in the south. . Both my atlases [Readers Digest, and BP] show lakes further north and east that look like they should be included (up to Conoble Lake, 40 km East of Ivanhoe). And both atlases say Prungle Lakes (not Lake Pringle). With Conoble, it’s 260 km long (curved).

And so does Google Maps.

MBG02 (talk) 02:03, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

@MBG02 and The Drover's Wife: I have no personal knowledge of the topic, but the information you mention above comes from the entry in the New South Wales State Heritage Register. As the lakes are also listed on the Australian National Heritage List (see entry see the Location section) and by UNESCO (see entry see the map tab), it is possible that the boundaries of the site varies between the three listings. I note that in the Australian National Heritage list it says "About 240,000ha, 35km north east of Robinvale, located in the Murray Darling Basin in south western New South Wales, comprising the revised boundary as endorsed by the World Heritage Committee in 1995. The revised boundary is a reduced area of that originally inscribed into the World Heritage List in 1981." So the boundaries of the World Heritage Listing have changed over time. There is no guarantee that the heritage protection at the three levels is necessarily of the same area (although the Australian National Heritage List seems to be conforming to the UNESCO list). We may need to explain that the extent of the boundaries varies with the listings (if that is indeed the case). If we need to merge info from the Australian Heritage Database into this article, it can be found at User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox, thankfully both are CC-BY. Kerry (talk) 03:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Having downloaded the map from the UNESCO site, it's a lovely map (but copyright, pity!) but clearly shows the UNESCO extent is from Lake Mulurulu down to the Prungle Lakes (so assuming Pringle is just a typo of Prungle), the NSW SHR is consistent with the UNESCO entry and Conoble Lake doesn't get a mention in either. Kerry (talk) 03:45, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Ooh ooh ooh, I found this map on the Australian Government Department of Environment and Energy website, which means it's CC-BY (linked from here which is CC-BY). This will make a nice addition to the article. Kerry (talk) 03:56, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

I do own more books that might explain it (the extent of Willandra Lakes), but I have to move stuff to get to them. (And I’m not good at Google searching.) I wonder what name is used for Mulurulu, northwards; and why “Willandra” (for the lakes and NP) when the National Park is even further away (than Conoble).

Any chance you can get the same map, for the bit 160 km to the east? (With Willandra NP?) MBG02 (talk) 04:07, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

@MBG02: Sorry, I missed your comment above (tip, if you want a specific person's or people's attention, use the {{ping|Username|Username|Username}} (just as I did for you here or write on their user page). I'm afraid when it comes to maps, it depends on who is publishing them and under what license. For example, if you look at this map of Willandra NP published by the NSW Govt, I immediately notice that this is a Google map being displayed (and I know Google maps are copyright) so when I look at the bottom of the page for the copyright information/link (which is called "Copyright and disclaimer" in this case), I was unsurprised to find that, while the website is generally CC-BY licensed, there is an explicit exclusion for maps as described here. But to return to the question of the extent of Willandra Lakes, the scope of this article is explicitly the world heritage-listed area, not Willandra Lakes in general. Generally unless a placename is officially defined with a boundary (as national parks and world-heritage listings are), one cannot say with certainty whether any particular spot is "in it" or not. According to the NSW Govt place name search "Willandra Lakes" appears to have no official definition at all. I would imagine informally that it would include all the lakes along Willandra Creek (which is an official name). However, Willandra Creek is very long and it does pass by the Willandra Homestead which is within the Willandra National Park, so that probably explains why we are seeing the name Willandra being used for things 160km apart. This google map may give some sense of the relationship between the two. I think if you want to write about Willandra Lakes more generally here on Wikipedia (i.e. beyond the definition of the world heritage listing), then I think it needs a separate article (maybe rename this one "Willandra Lakes World-Heritage Area" and the other one maybe "Willandra Lakes" or "Willandra Creek") and make sure the two articles cross-reference each other explaining the relationship between them. Does that help? Kerry (talk) 00:59, 8 November 2018 (UTC)