Lake Eyre—Desolate, Mysterious

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30093, 29 March 1963, Page 9

Lake Eyre—Desolate, Mysterious

AT Lake Eyre, in the north of the Australian State of South. Australia, Donald Campbell will attempt to break the land speed record in his Proteus Bluebird car later this year. As at Bonneville, Utah, where in 1960 Campbell crashed. Lake Eyre has a salt bed. It is 110 miles long and 40 miles wide in its northern section and 40 miles long and 18 miles wide in its southern section. Its lowest parts are 39ft below sea-level. Its total area is more than 3000 square miles and it drains an area of nearly 500,000 square miles. Thin rivers flow into it, but it is rarely filled, nor is it ever full for long, because the average annual rainfall of the regions is five inches, whereas the evaporation rate is lOOin a year.

Thick Salt

I Professor Madigan of the | University of Adelaide tral versed the lake in 1929 when I it was dry. Twelve miles from J its shore he found the pinkyJ white crust of the southern ! portion to be broken up into I tesselations resembling the I pancake ice of polar regions. I A bore sunk into the bed I revealed that the salt crust I was 17in thick, “and would | have carried a locomotive.” I It was on the southern porI tion of the lake, 30 miles I from Muloorina Station, that I Donald Campbell made [ several trial runs at over 100 ! miles an hour in a Jaguar [ in October, 1961. He said that I the tyre-adhesion of the surI face was better than at Lake I Utah, and that Lake Eyre I offered the advantage of a [ longer run, allowing slower

acceleration to maximum speed. Lake Eyre has always been a place of mirages and dreams. From the ground when it is dry the shimmering light on its surface sometimes creates a mirage that it is filled with water; at other times shadows from breaks in the crust give the impression of bushes growing on sand ridges. For the first time in living memory it was completely filled in 1950 when flood waters poured down Cooper Creek and the Warburton river. Several parties visited the lake, some using motorboats, and caught fish in it, but never found it more than 12ft deep.

Desolate

Seen from the air by a traveller in the middle of 1962, when it was fairly full again, it was a desolate sheet of water with patches of scum on its surface. Near its shores its banks could be seen going down into the clear water, giving an illusion of a depth of at least 100 feet. The red earth around it seemed more desolate still; yet, says Professor Madigan, “in its good seasons its hundreds of miles of knee-deep grasses lure men to their destruction. Once they come under its spell they cannot leave it.” Many men were ruined trying to establish cattle properties in its eastern region late last century. One of the dreams for its betterment was to cut a channel from Spencer Gulf to the lake and let waters of the ocean fill it with seawater in the hope of in-

ducing a greater rainfall, but it was pointed out that areas near the head of the Great Australian Bight, near the ocean, are the most arid in the continent Another proposal was put forward by Dr. J. J. C. Bradfield, designer of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge: that the rivers of the dividing range in Queensland be dammed and their waters carried by pipe-line to irrigate the Lake Eyre region, irrigating 4500 square miles and enabling it to carry 20 million more sheep.

Legends

Aboriginal legend says that the lake area was covered by green sky supported by trees down which sons of gods descended to interfere with the lives and loves of aborigines. Then either the aborigines cut down the gum trees by which the gods descended or the gods, not wishing to return. cut them down themselves: the green sky was replaced by the blue one across which the sun passed every day and burnt the region up. But scientists say that about a hundred million years ago a sea extended through the centre of Australia from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Great Australian Bight The land gradually rose and about a million years ago formed a lake of about 40,000 square miles, which included the present Australian lakes Eyre, Torrens, Gardiner, Gregory, Blanche, Gallabonna and Frame. Under decreasing rainfall the large lake dried into smaller lakes, and so in the

uncertain water-supply died out a vast population of prehistoric animals: the Diprotodon, a lumbering, gentle marsupial like a rhinoceros of up to Ifift long, the eight feet giant Kangaroo; the 10ft Emu; the Giant Wombat; and alligators and tortoises—-their bones are found in the mud under the salt around the shores of the lake.

Discovery

The lake was discovered in 1840 by the explorer E. J. Eyre, who thought it part of a “horseshoe” of water containing Lake Torrens and making impossible the passage from Adelaide to the north. In 1858 B. H. Babbage and P. E. Warburton found a way through the "horseshoe” which was supposed to connect it with Lake Torrens; in 1869 J. McDouall Stuart examined part of the western side; in 1860 G. W. Goyder named the lake after Eyre and mapped the area between lakes Eyre and Torrens. In 1861 J. McKinlay, leading one of the search parties for the lost explorers Burke and Wills, found the country east of Lake Eyre covered with rich grasses: it was this discovery during a good season which lured many cattlemen to their doom. A place of desolation, illusion and failure —but as a speedway, with the world’s most powerful racing care travelling faster than man has ever travelled on the ground over the bones of phehistoric animals who died hundreds of thousands of years ago, it still has its appeal to the imagination. Work has begun on pre-

paring the track. Special machinery will be used to smooth the bed, to remove about 80 salt islands and to shift more than 2000 tons of salt. It was expected that the track will be ready for trial runs in April. If so, Campbell said recently, he would make the attemt on the record in May. However, rain in the last few days may set the programme back. Equipment which has reached Australia and will be used during the speed record attempt includes a precision timing device accurate to one hundredth at a

second. It ia valued at more than £lO,OOO. Known as a cinetimer, the precision instrument will photograph the Bluebird at the slant and finishing point, at the same time photographing the face of a clock recording the time the car reaches the two points. Although they may be positioned several miles apart, the clocks will show exactly the same reading when set in motion simultaneously by Landline control. It is expected that the Bluebird will make 65 test run® over the course before the actual record attempt.