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November 07, 2003
I saw some great images in The Australian from the website of the federal Bureau of Meteorology this morning.
One that caught my eye. It was of a place in South Australia that I've never been to, but I've always wanted to visit:
Peter Dobre, Lake Eyre, SA.
It rarely looks like that. Lake Eyre is located in arid central Australia. It is an immense dry salt lake that drains an area equal to that of France, Spain and Portugal, sits 15 meters below sea level and is the largest salt pan in the world.
Almost half the basin receives as little as 150 mm per year or less. The northern and eastern margins experience higher rainfall of the order of 400 mm per year, influenced by the southern of the summer monsoon. The Lake is fed mainly by its eastern tributaries (Diamantina and Georgina rivers and Cooper creek).
It sometimes fills up from floods that are connected to El Nino.
Lake Eyre was considered to be permanently dry, but the last fifty years have witnessed over twenty flood events. When rivers come down in flood there is a transformation of the desert: the lake and its surroundings become alive. It teems with bird life andthe landscape ibecomes one of ever-changing colours and patterns.
Lake Eyre Basin has fired the pioneer explorer imagination as the great inland sea, and then as the man-made inland sea. It is white man dreaming about the centre of Australia flourishing supporting millions of people on the present immense plains of sandy and stony deserts.
It is protected as a National Park, as it should be since this wilderness sits on top of the Great Artesian Basin. The Great Artesian Basin is the largest artesian groundwater basin in the world. It underlies approximately one-fifth of Australia andextends beneath the arid and semi-arid parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory, stretching from the Great Dividing Range to the Lake Eyre depression.
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I've been there. Suffice to say that if you ever do visit, make sure you go by air. Don't make the mistake I did of travelling by road.