Lake Hart

One disclaimer I ought to mention: Not all the photos on this blog were taken by me. Though the best ones are obviously mine, a few of the less important, blurry, supporting photos were gleaned from others (primarily Christa, but also Tim, Duncan, JT and anybody else that lets me get my hands on their camera SD card...).  

Lake Hart is a shallow salt lake about a half hour drive to the west of Woomera. Like the Dead Sea, it has no outlet. All the water that flows in evaporates. In the week prior to our visit there was a fair amount of rain and the water level was pretty high. We expect that the lake will look a lot different in a couple months.

As usual, the flies were pretty bad. The locals keep warning us that they will only get worse. None of our bug sprays seem effective. We occasionally test various substances (like Eucalyptus), but have not had much success. I think you just have to tough them out...

A reminder that we are in the Woomera Prohibited Area and that the lake was used for target and bombing practice:

From about 1918 to 1931, Lake Hart was commercially harvested for salt and there are still visible remnants of the operations today. It had some of the purest salt of the time and some consumers claimed it was twice as salty as normal salt.

The salt (and some water) were pushed up into large catchment pens from which the water would drain and  evaporate. We think these are the structures that we still see extending out into the water:

The salt was then harvested and refined on site before being loaded onto the train which runs right by the lake. There is still a pile of some 7000 tons of salt from 1931 that was never picked up:

Wheels from cart used to move salt:

A train came through while we were there. It was mostly freight, but there was one passenger car at the beginning of the train.

Everything down near the water level is covered in salt. We walked across salt out to the edge of the water and then took off our shoes to wade out a ways. In most places, walking was not bad, but there were a few places out in the water where the salt crystals were quite sharp and walking was painful.
The beach was just a layer of salt:

Christa crossing the sharp section of salt crystals:

For the curious or suspicious, here are my sources for the "facts" I present in this post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Eyre_basin
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/35997558
http://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/salt.htm