|Home > National News > The Big Dry > Article|
It is the perfect time to fathom the depths of the enigmatic and spectacular Lake George.
For the first time in nearly 60 years the 25-kilometre long and 10-kilometre wide lake, beside the highway near Canberra, is absolutely bone-cracking dry, navigable by motor car from one end to the other and generating clouds of dust storms.
It has now been well over a year since there has been any significant quantity of water in the lake; not since the terrible droughts of the early 1940s can anyone recall such desiccation of the lake bed.
Even in 1986 - the last time it was regarded as empty - the lake still had several large pools of water. This time there is not a drop.
The draining of Lake George, says government ecologist Justin Nancarrow, is a strong sign that NSW is in the grip of the kind of drought that may hit the state only once or twice in a century.
"There's a strong correlation between when the lake dries out and a really big drought," he says. "The link between Lake George drying out and the current drought is pretty poignant."
The drought is also a good opportunity for Mr Nancarrow to do further research into his theory that Lake George has secret and deeply hidden connections to nearby river systems. He is soon to publish a paper arguing that the lake is connected by aquifers, which pass under the lake's escarpment, to the Yass River.
Until 27,000 years ago Lake George flowed into the river but then the escarpment rose, blocking all surface links.
Mr Nancarrow also believes the connection between Lake George and the Yass River may be a major cause of salinity in the river. When full, the lake is one of the saltiest water bodies in inland NSW - almost as salty as the ocean - which Mr Nancarrow says is the result of salt blown from the Pacific by storms.
Ever since Europeans explored and settled the Yass River region, the Yass River has also been regarded as a saline catchment area and Mr Nancarrow's paper suggests the Lake George connection may be the reason for its saltiness.
Because of Lake George's strange and sudden fluctuations in volume, its hydrology has been the subject of much bizarre speculation. "Many urban myths have been started about the lake being connected to other lakes in Peru or South Africa and there is a little grain of truth in it," Mr Nancarrow says.
It does seem to be connected to another water system, he says, but only on the other side of the mountain rather than the world.
Also in National
|text | handheld (how to)||
Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald.
|advertise | contact us|