Lake Eyre: With Ron on the West Coast of South Australia
There are many ways to experience the marvels of the South Australian outback. By air you take the amazing contours of this ancient land - with it's numerous creeks and rivers running down from rugged slopes to the dry interior. The local fauna springs to life as the waters make their way through this harsh yet beautiful landscape.
In fact much of the interior of the South Australian bush is one enormous sump where a myriad of creeks and rivers end their epic journeys. Some, in special seasons will make it all the way here to magnificent Lake Eyre.
Back in 2000 we choppered over the Lake system which - at times - lives up to the mythical qualities of that Inland Sea the early explorers expected to find. One bloke who knows it better than most is legendary tourism operator and pilot desert Dick Lang.
Dick Lang, Desert Air Safaris: "Nowhere in the world have I seen a single huge big salt lake of one vast sheet like Lake Eyre. That's why it's an icon. Lake Eyre is an attraction - watching it change from a white shining sheet to the first incomes of muddy water travelling across it. To that water drying up to the mud disappearing and then to the salt coming up through and growing another sheet of salt on the top of it. It's always changing."
And it's changing even as we speak as the waters, which fed into Lake Eyre North earlier this year, begin to recede and evaporate. Recently Dick took the Postcards crew for another jaunt over the far north of South Australian to witness this phenomenon. From a desert airstrip we set off - and soon the inland marvel began to reveal itself and it did so in stages with the dry salt flats of Eyre South coming into view.
Dick Lang, Desert Air Safaris: "Lake Eyre South instead only fills from the Flinders Ranges and the Andamooka, Stuart Creek area so the rainfall here, which is basically a desert and an arid area. You don't get a lot of rain going into Lake Eyre South."
But it's Lake Eyre North that most come to see - covering about one hundred and forty kilometres from south to north and about fifty five kilometres from east to west. And it's a phenomenon that much of Australia can take credit for.
It's not until you get up in the air that you realise just how big everything. In fact the water catchment area for Lake Eyre takes in about one sixth of the land mass of Australia and that means all of this is being fed by rivers in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western New South Wales and they're all funneling in to the lowest point in Australia.
Surveys have plumbed the deepest part of Lake Eyre North at about forty five feet below sea level and that's why the waters from so much of Australia find their way here. But beware. The lake's mythic and iconic status means the mere mention of floods up here will set tongues wagging about a full lake. As Dick Lang knows from forty years of visiting this watery marvel, such things happen very rarely.
Dick Lang, Desert Air Safaris: "This year there was a big flood that came in from Queensland that came down the Georgina and down the Diamantina but it was a short flood that flooded into the top of Lake Eyre and spread out over half of Lake Eyre. Unfortunately there was a lot of publicity given to it … and it became a feeding frenzy and everybody said Lake Eyre was full. It was never full this time. It was never covered - no more than half."
But even half a lake - in the heart of Australia - is a pretty impressive thing. The pink tinge to the lake is caused by the decomposition of a unique brine shrimp caught in the salty and solidifying water. As Dick says it's just one manifestation of an ever changing lake that every Australian should try to see - whether wet or dry - for one very simple reason - it is an icon.
Dick Lang runs regular flights into the interior of Australia. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards-sa.com.au
Dick Lang Desert Air Safaris
Ph (08) 8264 7200Published 27th September 2009
