AN AUSTRALIAN LAKE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 10 February 1923, Page 9

AN AUSTRALIAN LAKE.

♦ . DISCOVERED BY A CONSTABLE. A mounted constable attached to Arltunga police station has reported the discovery of a large fresh-water lake in Central Australia, about 177 mile* from Coniston station, towards the Lander. It is unnamed, and appears on no maps. The constable, after describing Ins journeyings through desert-like country broken by water holes and spinnifex, suggests that the lake be named Lake Paradise or Surprise. At the time (June, 1922"), ft looked a perfect picture of "beauty, absolutely un-: disturbed, and with not even a native of the bush camped there. "The waters were a moving mass of ducks of all descriptions. Through the water at intervals and * outside the water for! some considerable distance are large' white trunks of spreading box trees. On the fringe of the lake for about loft to 20ft is a pure white sahdy beach. The land about the lake is covered with green grasses of many kinds, and wild native rice in abundance. The distanco round the lake is about ten miles. On each side of it are big red sandhills. About the centre are several green grassed islands, which make the lake the prettiest 1 have yet seen in the Northern Territory. When full of water it would be about 20 miles round. It would make a splendid fattening depot for stock, an ideal dairy farm, or sanatorium for sick and suffering people with luiik trouble. It has a splen- . did dry climate, and there were no signs of mosquitoes." TV widest stretch of water across the laleo w^Mld be about three milel*. He thought that from the lake shallow wells or bores could be obtained to nrovide a valuable rtew stock route to the north-west and Western Australia.