Touring Lake Eyre
With the astoundingly beautiful imageries flooding the photographic senses in Australia presently are of Lake Eyre, the Eyre Basin and South West Queensland. This visual spectacular can only be seen from the air as this astonishing amount of water has yet to reach the Lake lookout thus far.
Though Lake Eyre, as its officially known as, is a mind-blowingly vast, dry stretch of glistening salt in the South Australian outback, in a basin so large that it crosses the borders of multiple territories and states.
On cloudless days, the seemingly featureless landscape can seem to merge with the horizon, making it difficult to distinguish between land and sky – an illusory effect that has caused several aircraft crashes during the past 50 years.
The basin itself supports over 60,000 people, and is one of the principal desert river systems on this planet with a wealth of flora and fauna and is fed by three major water systems – the Georgina, Diamantina rivers and Cooper Creek.
Visitors who come here often remarking on the incredible sense of isolation and space, including the remarkably out of this world landscape presence. Most of the time the lake is dry (it has only filled to capacity three times in the past 150 years) but about every eight years it receives a significant amount of water.
The flood waters that are flowing into the Lake Eyre and Basin currently are from the northern state of Queensland which has devastated regional areas, but even out of this destruction comes natures true beauty. These waters will flow through areas of deserts that have not seen water in nearly half a century. In previous years, this journey of water has taken from 3 to 10 months to flow through to the basin, and evaporated even more rapidly, though due to the sheer volume it has arrived in a record-breaking two months.
On these occasions the lake bursts to life, forming an oasis for thousands of migratory waterbirds and producing seas of wildflowers. Not to mention the Diamantina River near Birdsville has thousands of small fish trying to lug themselves upstream.
With the touring through Lake Eyre in South Australia to Birdsville in Queensland and Cameron’s Corner of the virtual angle of New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia is abundant and flourishing in the wake of the massive downpours that have occurred earlier this year.
Wet or dry, this country is a truly special place.