There is a natural phenomenon that is causing much celebration in the ACT area and beyond. Lake George once again has water and teeming with wildlife after years of drought. It has perplexed and enthralled people over the years as it went through the “now you see it, now you don’t” periods.
I remember having seen Lake George with water only at least twice during our several trips to Canberra. A lot of times it was like a dry cracked paddock, with no visible existence of wildlife.
Recently Lake George is full again and water birds and other wildlife have returned to enjoy it. Filipino-Australian Honorary Senior Lecturer of Literature, Languages and Linguistics and prolific author, Dr Merlinda Bobis of Canberra is one of the locals who visited Lake George. Merlinda who recently released the book titled “The Kindness of Birds” expressed her great delight:
“I was rushing this morning to visit Lake George that is now a lake again after years of dry! And the water birds are back too! “
We are glad to share the photos that she took of the lake.
For those who are not familiar with Lake George, here’s a brief excerpt of the information in Wikipedia about it:
"...Lake George is an endorheic lake, as it has no outflow of water to rivers and oceans.
The lake is believed to be more than a million years old. Originally, small streams drained its catchment into the Yass River, but then the Lake George Escarpment rose due to major crustal movement along a strong fault line, blocking this drainage and forming the lake.
The thickness of sediment beneath the lake exceeds 250 metres (820 ft), according to a Bureau of Mineral Resources Canberra drilling programme in the 1982/83 summer. The oldest sediments, which lie some distance above the bedrock, were dated at 4–5 million years using spore and pollen analysis and magnetic reversal stratigraphy.
At 25 km (16 mi) long and 10 km (6.2 mi) wide, Lake George is long, largely flat and extremely shallow, with a very small catchment. Resultant evaporation rates as well as a tendency for strong winds to blow the water back on itself explain the mysterious filling and drying episodes on both short term (hours) and long term (years) time scales that have been observed."