Lake Ballard - Storm and Beauty

Fifty kms down a dirtroad from Menzies, a tiny ancient Goldfields settlement from yesteryear, lies the saline Lake Ballard.

 On the way to Lake Ballard we visited the bush cemetery with its poignant reminders of how sudden death lurked in the pioneer days.

Lake Ballard is the beautiful bush location for Antony Gormley's art installation, "Inside Australia". Gormley took laser body scans of fifty one of the Menzies inhabitants and then cast figures two thirds body size out of vanadium, titanium and molybdenum. The figures are installed on the lake with great effect.

As we arrived, fluffy clouds rolled across the bush. A friendly sand monitor padded around us, flicking his tongue for treats.

 

Suddenly, huge cumulo-nimbus clouds appeared: storms were threatening on the horizon. We battened down the campsite in the red dirt beside the lake, just us and the rushing wind bearing thunder and lightning flashes. In a flash, rain pelted down, releasing the pungent scents of earth and eucalyptus, water pooling in swirling torrents past the lakeshore out to the lake surface that was dry and cracked an hour before.

Early evening, the bright moon shone over a horizon constantly dotted with sheets of rolling lightning parted by jagged spears of light - an amazing spectacle of nature.

In the early morning light, the sun peeped pink and orange above the horizon, providing a dramatic backdrop for the figures.