Lake Tyrrell - Sea Pink Lake Lake Tyrrell - Sea Pink Lake

Lake Tyrrell is a unique salt lake located 7kms north of Sea Lake. The Lake environment is host to Mallee reptiles, kangaroos, emus, white-faced chats, and an inland gullery.

To get to Lake Tyrrell, which is Victoria's largest salt lake covering 20,860 hectares, head north on the Calder Highway and it's well signposted on your right-hand side. There is a viewing platform and information bay.

Lake Tyrrell and surrounding salt lakes were formed as a result of the innundation of the Murray-Darling Basin through sea level rise and its subsequent retreat; the present landscape and soils were formed as a result of this process.

The lake itself is quite ancient and may have been formed by drifting sand blocking the passage of Tyrrell Creek. Over time it became a giant salt basin due to the flow of subterranean saline water and the run-off from Tyrrell Creek.

There is also evidence of the indigenous occupation of the area over the last 45,000 years. This evidence includes a variety of artefacts that can be observed throughout the Tyrrell region.

Lake Tyrrell is dry most of the year, although at times it may be covered by shallow water. Evaporation leaves a salt crust which is commercially extracted by the Cheetham Salt Works at the northern end of the lake. Over 100,000 tonnes of salt is extracted from the lake each year. The first recorded salt harvest from Lake Tyrrell was in 1896.

Small islands in the lake are used as a breeding ground by thousands of seagulls. The saltbush and samphire around the lagoon support a range of wildlife while the lunette to the east contains significant Aboriginal relics.

Lake Tyrrell offers unique opportunities to view sunsets, sunrises and stars, however, visitors are warned not to drive on the lake bed.

The Mallee Rally, an off-road desert car rally organised by the Sea Lake Off Road Club, is held here on the Queen's Birthday weekend each year in June. A Scenic Drive is held every second year.

traveller.com.au says

Lake Tyrrell, Victoria: The pink lake that put a dying town on the map

Julie Pringle parks her vehicle above the dry banks of Lake Tyrrell in Victoria's northwest. Brooding rain clouds stretch across the broad Mallee skies, threatening to disrupt our pre-dawn tour from the farming town of Sea Lake. But with the rain forecast to hold off for a few more hours, and with no hint of a breeze, Julie declares the conditions ideal for creating mirror-like reflections off the surface of the state's largest and oldest salt lake.

"I love it when we get rain clouds here," she says. "The skies open up and talk to you. It's just beautiful."

She leads us out onto the shallow saltpan's crusty surface. Being mid-November, barely any water remains inside the lake. The winter rains that fill it from June to August each year have mostly evaporated, with the winds shifting what's left from one bay to another. At this time of year though, most of the water on the lake's surface has seeped up from below, disguising muddy pools lingering just beneath the surface crust.

As we tiptoe out onto the lake in distinctly unfashionable gumboots, the crunch of dried salt beneath our feet sounds like we're trudging through a bowl of Corn Flakes. Around the lake's edges, the briny crust betrays a rosy tinge that's triggered by mixing spring rains with high salinity levels and algae. Between the months of September and December, that precise chemical process turns this into one of Victoria's rare pink lakes (others are located near Dimboola and in the Murray Sunset National Park, west of Ouyen).

In recent years, the blushing stain and the mirror-like reflections off the surface of the shallow lake have helped turn Sea Lake into one of the state's unlikeliest tourist towns. Prior to 2014, however, young townsfolk couldn't escape it fast enough. Its ageing pub, the Royal Hotel, was on its last legs, reflecting its patronage. And the major supermarket chains had abandoned it. Then a photo of sunset reflections on Lake Tyrrell went viral on Chinese social media, sparking a flood of foreign, then domestic, tourists beating a path north out of Melbourne, injecting some sorely needed funds into the region.

The trickle-on effect of these never-before-seen visitors traipsing into town with tripods over their shoulder, hoping to capture arresting images of the Milky Way arcing over the lake, or of the rich dawn colours mirrored in the water's surface, has been nothing short of astounding. Locals banded together to buy the pub, spending millions to restore it as the hub of social activity in town and turn it into a must-visit attraction. Real estate prices skyrocketed as properties were bought up and rented out through short-term accommodation websites. And as elderly residents inevitably move to bigger towns with better health facilities, young folk who grew up in the Mallee began returning, giving Sea Lake a much-needed energy boost.

In December 2020, a multi-million-dollar tourist installation opened beside the lake in an effort to enhance the experience, and the road there from town was upgraded to minimise the potential for motoring accidents. Before that, a photo gallery and caf© opened up inside the old bank building in order to showcase the lake's beauty, which had been taken for granted in the past. Then late last year, the disused Buloke Shire Office building on the Calder Highway was repurposed as a brand-new Visitor Centre that's manned entirely by volunteers. One of those volunteers is Julie Pringle.

It's fair to say that Pringle has led the charge in promoting tourism in and around the Sea Lake area. She was the one who uploaded the photo that went viral on Chinese social media. And it was her who fielded enquiries from an inbound travel agent in Sydney, who promptly organised tour itineraries to the Mallee to see the lake, ensuring a stampede of Greyhound buses with unfamiliar foreign lettering plastered down the side to pull up in town. It was also Pringle who saw the business potential early in the piece when she opened an accommodation booking service and offered tours to the lake three times a day, seven days a week. Without her knowledge of the seasons and the lake's shifting moods, astro and landscape photographers wouldn't be able to get the images they want nearly as easily.

Of course, COVID halted the buses from coming two years ago, though that's expected to resume once lockdown restrictions are lifted in China. On the flipside, domestic tourists have now cottoned on, with plenty including visits to Sea Lake and Lake Tyrrell while they motor through Victoria's northwest following the Silo Art Trail that connects small-town grain silos sprinkled throughout the Wimmera and Mallee regions. In October 2019, a colourful artwork portraying a young girl swinging from a Mallee eucalypt that overlooks the lake was completed on Sea Lake's towering silos, alongside the railway line. Street murals also feature throughout the town.

But it's the lake that really draws them in, even though it has taken 120,000 years for people to realise just how special is.

"It's probably the most magnificent thing in regional Victoria," says Pringle. "I really believe that. It is absolutely outstanding."

Mark Daffey visited Lake Tyrrell courtesy of Sea Lake Tyrrell Tours (sealaketyrrelltours.com.au).

Source: traveller.com.au

❊ Address ❊

 ⊜  Lake Tyrrell Ninda 3533 View Map

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❊ Web Links ❊

➼ Lake Tyrrell - Sea Pink Lake 

❊ Also See.. ❊

➼ Sea Lake Mallee Rally 1974-2019


➼ Pink Lake - Dimboola







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