Lake Eyre
Australia's largest lake, a salt pan that floods only rarely
For most of the time, Lake Eyre — officially Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre — is not a lake at all but a glaring white salt pan in the heart of arid South Australia, the lowest point on the continent. Yet every few years, when monsoon rains far to the north pour down the rivers of the outback, water creeps across the cracked salt and the dead heart of Australia comes briefly, spectacularly alive. Pelicans and waterbirds arrive in their hundreds of thousands to breed on a lake that may not fill again for a decade.
The lake is the terminus of one of the largest internally draining basins on Earth, an endorheic system covering a sixth of the continent. Its floor lies about 15 metres below sea level, and when it fills completely — a rare event recorded only a handful of times in the past century — it can spread across some 9,500 square kilometres to become, briefly, the largest lake in Australia. The water arrives salty from dissolving the salt crust, and as it evaporates under the desert sun it grows hypersaline before vanishing again, leaving the white pan behind.
The lake bears the name of explorer Edward John Eyre, who reached it in 1840, and its dual name honours the Arabana people, its traditional owners. Its vast, flat, mirror-like surface made it a natural venue for land-speed record attempts, most famously Donald Campbell's in 1964. The rare floods are now ecological events of international importance, triggering explosions of fish and the great breeding gatherings of pelicans and banded stilts. Most years, though, it is simply the shimmering, silent salt heart of the Australian outback.