Lake Ballard

Lake Ballard, Menzies, WA

We nearly didn't go. We arrived in Kalgoorlie yesterday with the showers and chilly wind so the idea of driving to a lake where you are encouraged to walk out onto the surface didn't appeal. But today the sun was shining so we packed our picnic lunch and went.

Lake Ballard is a two hour drive north from Kalgoorlie. There is a lot of mining activity so the roads are great but I hate to think of the effect on the environment. It's a very modified landscape. - it appears like bush from the road but there are open cut mines everywhere.

Paddington Mine north of Kalgoorlie

At Menzies we turned west expecting a dirt track for the 50 km to Lake Ballard but the road was bitumen for some way and then graded dirt for the rest. So the trip was no hardship at all. We could have brought the van and camped at the lake. It's a spectacular spot.

Lake Ballard is attracting attention because of a public art installation. Antony Gormley has created 51 cast sculptures and placed them on the lake's surface, spread out over quite a distance. Apparently it takes about three hours to walk around the whole lot but we only walked to about six of them. The surface of the lake was damp but firm. It looked spectacular in the sunshine with a mirage trying to convince us that there was water 'just over there'. And there were lots of plants flowering as well.

The lake is also well known in the birding community because when there is a rain event and the lake fills (it's a very rare) the Banded Stilts appear in their thousands and start nesting on the low islands in the lake, feeding on the brine shrimp that have been lying dormant in the lake bed. That must be a spectacular sight.

Gormley sculpture, Lake Ballard

Mirage, Lake Ballard

Gormley sculptures, Lake Ballard

Road from Lake Ballard to Menzies

View of  Lake Ballard from Snake Hill

See through to the sea

Yesterday I was part of a team trying to find as many bird species in one day as we could. We were competing in the annual Challenge Bird Count against other teams in other areas doing the same thing.

At Point Addis, while my team members were trying to locate the Rufous Bristlebird, I got distracted by the metal, two-dimensional, see-through sculpture on the information board. It depicted Victoria's floral emblem Pink Heath Epacris impressa.

Recently we visited Geraldton, Western Australia and I was very taken with three instances using the same technique. One was of a wall depicting a school of fish on the boardwalk on the sea side of the Geraldton Museum. Another was the memorial to the ship Sydney that went down with all hands off the coast near Geraldton in World War 2. On the dome there is a bird for every lost sailor. And the third was a lookout that had been installed at Greenough in memory of a child who had drowned.

By the way, my team found the Bristlebird. It called beautifully for us and wandered out onto the carpark. What a stunning bird it is.