Day 96 – Lake Argyle – Thierings on Tour

It was a beautiful place fo wake up and Jazzy & I went for a little walk around the grounds. You really can’t go past the view of the lake in the distance from the cliff top, so we sat there for a while enjoying the view. We’ve had some big emotions in the family recently, so it was nice to pause and relax. Let’s hope everyone can get back to a happy place soon! Travelling definitely isn’t all glorious memories and permanent happiness, but it’s brought us a lot of incredible moments together!

We took it easy this morning as I had a few meetings and the girls did a bit of homework. Chris found more things wrong with the car (I actually don’t want to know anymore unless it needs an immediate fix or I need to pay a bill), so he has been tasked with compiling a list for the next mechanic we find.

We drove out to checkout the dam wall and it was cool to see the lake from up high and a different angle. Jazzy thought that the hydro station jets looked like whipped cream, which was funny. The power of that water is truly extraordinary and impressive! It’s estimated that the power production is the equivalent to 60M litres of diesel being used – now that’s a pretty cool win for the environment!

After that we checked out the picnic area that overlooks the Ord River, another peaceful and nice spot.

It was super hot once we got back, so the pool was a great way to cool off, although it really is too cold to enjoy for any length of time. Maybe they do that on purpose so people jump in for a photo and don’t stay in there long term.

We had booked a sunset lake cruise so headed off mid-afternoon on a bus to the boat ramp where we jumped on a boat and enjoyed cruising along the lake. It is such a huge man made lake, it’s hard to fathom that it simply didn’t exist before.

Claire, our skipper, shared many interesting facts including that the surface area is on average around 980m2, however this has risen in big wet season to almost double that, making it on average 21 Sydney Harbours big. The dam wall and lake were only created in the late 60s/70s for, but the area is more than thriving now!

We cruised and saw short-eared rock wallabies, freshwater crocodiles and archer fish. A few interesting facts about each:
– the female wallaby can store up to 3 prepared embryos for up to 7 years and implant them whenever conditions are right. She can also postpone pregnancies and self-abort if conditions aren’t right.
– there are estimates that Lake Argyle is home to a population of up to 25,000 freshwater crocodiles and some have grown up to 4.5m because there are no predators for them here.
– the archer fish are smart enough to recognise different faces from under water and love to hunt insects out of the water by squirting them. We got to experience by holding up pieces of bread that the archer fish thought was their food and shot up spouts of water. The girls went crazy for this!

The boat took us all around, but seeing the area we covered by boat on a map really put scale into perspective! It was a glorious evening out on the water. We got to enjoy a nice swim and some drinks/nibbles in and out of the water at sunset – that’s pretty special.