Kati-Thanda-Lake Eyre is the best known of South Australia’s salt lakes, but there are many others to explore.
If you cut down south through the red centre, then turn off the Stuart Highway and hit the dirt tracks south of Kingoonya, you’ll encounter some of the most hostile terrain on the planet. Immense salt lakes, such as Lake Gairdner and Lake Everard, stretch over vast distances across an arid and sun-blasted landscape.
There is no bird song here and no visible birds. Even the Little Ravens and Black Kites that are such a feature of the Red Centre are absent. There are a trillion bush flies, though, blown here to their doom by the prevailing winds.
And yet there is life here… Hardy succulents, such as Purple Dewplants grow right among the salt crusts at the edge of the lake. Salt-bush grows thickly on the shore. Ants forage over the surface of the salt lake itself, harvesting those insects that have been taken there by the never-ending winds.
It’s a harsh landscape, yet in its isolation and starkness there is beauty.
