023 Bake on the world’s largest salt lake

It’s a huge, flat, salty lake that hardly ever contains water!

It’s a huge, flat, salty lake that hardly ever contains water. A sort of “Clayton’s lake” if you will. But whenever there’s rain, it attracts a wealth of birdlife and wildlife, including dingoes, and the curiosity of many. It’s the world’s largest salt lake, Lake Eyre, in SA’s remote interior.

Trying to reach it on foot or in vehicles can be treacherous, so many choose to view it from the air. Various tours offer joyrides over the 9500km2 saltpan that fills or near-fills only around four times a century.

Named for explorer Edward Eyre who discovered it in 1840, Lake Eyre wasn’t known to fill until 1949 (although it’s not exactly on the beaten path to anywhere, so maybe a few floods missed being recorded).

Sir Donald Campbell used it once too, setting the world land-speed record there in 1964, when he zoomed across the dead-flat surface to reach speeds of 710km/h. It was dry then, of course, and had been for several years.

Where // Lake Eyre is the lowest point in Australia, 15m below sea level and 700km north of Adelaide.

Did you know? // There is a Lake Eyre Yacht Club (www.lakeeyreyc.com) whose dedicated – and, no doubt, patient – members take the opportunity to sail on it whenever there’s enough water to float their boats.