The Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area (WLWHA) in general, and Lake Mungo in particular, stand in iconic testimony to Australia's unique natural and cultural history. Sadly, the quantity and quality of available published information does less than justice to these heritage values. Mungo has, sometimes disingenuously, been labeled as the 'black hole' of Australian archaeology. In defence of the archaeological contributions, the road to successful research and publication has been strewn with more than the occasional minefield. Hostility from indigenous owners at removal of human remains and the exploitation of their history by white academics was matched by hostility from pastoral leaseholders at declaration of World Heritage status without their prior consultation. A rapprochement between science and traditional cultures at a meeting of scientists and indigenous owners at Mungo in 1989 established a commitment to full collaboration between both groups, a compact that was sealed by the return of the Mungo I cremated remains on the sandy shores of the Joulni section of the Lake Mungo lunette in January 1992. To review and revitalize research and publication, a joint conference of scientists and indigenous owners was organized and held at the Mungo Lodge on 6-9th September, 2006. Attendance of 41 persons witnessed presentation of 24 papers. In the papers published here emanating from that conference, Art Durband and his team revisit the question of the disputed gender of Mungo III, a source of much earlier age controversy. We are now assured Mungo Man was male! In the debate of robust versus gracile populations Westaway and Groves rule out any inheritance from Java's homo erectus lineages. Meanwhile the validity of gracile attribution to Mungo Man is further questioned by Durband and collaborators. From the 1999 publication of the 62,000 year age of Mungo Man, his rejuvenation to 41,000 years just four years later provides a measure of just some of the dating problems which beset us. In a site where dates and age interpretations have been fraught with problems Gillespie et al. shed important illumination helping establish the reliability of freshwater mussel shells for radiocarbon analysis. Their relative abundance in middens ensures their continuing use as an important tool in the Willandra chronology. Some major challenges facing the World Heritage future are addressed by Dora Constantinidis in the need for remote sensing. The need for comprehensive database availability is supplemented by new archaeological strategies designed to take full advantage of the rich resources the Willandra offers. Even after 20 years of survey and digital technology, apart from the Lake Mungo CD that I produced ten years ago, no systematic digital database exists. An urgent need is apparent, both to salvage unpublished data and provide means whereby it is released. The immense amount of unpublished archaeology, terminated by the sad and untimely death of Peter Clark in June, 2004, invites establishment of such a database in his honour. Funding remains a crippling constraint. In terms of archaeological research, recent efforts led by Rainer Grtin of the ANU and Nikki Stern of LaTrobe University, have successfully integrated Linkage Grant funds leading to a further ARC application. …