The next place we visited on the road trip with David Hufton was The Pink Lakes in NW Victoria. The lakes are situated in the large Murray Sunset National Park – but they are close to the edge of the park and can be reached on an all weather road.
The lakes lived up to their name – they really were pink. They are four salt lakes – Lake Hardy, Lady Crosbie, Lake Kenyon and Lake Becking. They are all salt lakes, with salt concentrations around 80 times higher than sea water. This makes for a fascinating environment. Their pink colour is due to a salt tolerant algae that lives in the water. Surrounding the lakes is salt tolerant vegetation.
On our way in, we stopped of at Lake Hardy. This is the smallest and the pinkest of the lakes.
We then continued on to Lake Crosbie where there is the larges of two camping grounds at the lakes. At the time there was only one other group – grey nomads with a caravan camping there.
Overnight it rained a fair amount – and it remained stormy for most of our visit. This provided some good atmospheric lighting – great for photography. Also – the lakes are supposed to appear their pinkest under a grey sky. But we had to put up with a constant strong and cold wind streaming from the west, and there was next to no shelter at the campground.
The Pink Lakes are a compact area, but there is a lot to visit. There are three short nature walks you can do – and over the next few days we did all of them with some extensions.
One interesting aspect of the lakes is their mining history. Salt was extracted from the lakes from 1916 to 1979. In the early days of the mining, the salt was taken out to a nearby town via a small gauge railway. But the engine caught fire on the opening day, and the line often got covered up by shifting sand. It was abandoned after a few years. More reliable were camels, complete with their Afghan camel driver. Much later trucks were used. The lakes also had a small own and even a school for a few years. In WW II, Italian interns were used as labour for the salt mines – hard work in the hot summers.
Some relics of the salt ming remain. Each lake seems to have wooden structures going into them – perhaps a ramp used to help remove the salt. There is also a big dump of salt – now an outdoor museum.
The vegetation around the lakes is also interesting to see. Further away are lots of mallee trees. Bird life was quite abundant.
Besides the wind, the other negative aspect for us were another group camped at the far end of the camping ground. They were quiet when at camp – but their noisy trail bikes did scare off the birds and they should not have ridden off track – in particular along the beach of Lake Crosbie.
This was another very worthwhile and interesting place to visit, and a great place for photography and to appreciate Nature.
More photographs are online on my website here.
Bought back great memories to my 95 yo mother who grew up on a farm nearby and attended the little Pink Lakes school. Thanks