Visit Victoria’s pink lakes
Murray-Sunset National Park’s stunning Pink Lakes are the perfect first stopover on a trip out west.
Since discovering the vast beauty of Murray-Sunset National Park (NP) – Victoria’s very own patch of mallee-dotted outback — on a previous trip, I’d been itching to get back there. So, when we were planning the itinerary for our cross-country epic from Melbourne to Western Australia, I strongly advocated for this delightfully isolated and unique national park to be our first stopover.
Located in Victoria’s far north-west corner, the 677,000ha national park is Victoria’s largest, stretching from the Pink Lakes near Underbool at its southern-most point to Lindsay Island, bordered by the Murray River in the north.
Much of the park is accessed via long sandy tracks suitable only for high clearance 4WDs, but you can reach the Pink Lakes in the south by 2WD, via the gravelled Pink Lakes Road, off the Mallee Highway, just east of the tiny town of Linga.
Given our cross-country chariot was a large Avida Birdsville motorhome, we were not going to be heading off into the scrub, so the Lake Crosbie Campground in the Pink Lakes section of the park was our destination of choice. The iconic pink hue of the salt lake is a stunning backdrop and it’s an incredibly peaceful spot to pull up stumps for the night. Sitting at camp watching the shadows stretch across the sparkling pink saltpan at sunset is truly a sight to behold.
With spectacular sunset photography in mind, we decided to get an early start on the 520km (around six hour) run from Melbourne, the first of many long days of driving on this trip.
Golden days
Just an hour up the Calder Highway is the laid-back Macedon Ranges town of Kyneton — the perfect rest stop for hungry road trippers to stop off for coffee and breakfast. Saturday morning brunch was in full swing around us as we tucked into bircher muesli, tasty eggs and great coffee at one of the delightful cafes on historic Piper Street, a popular tourist destination in its own right.
Kyneton is an old gold rush town, once a resting place for miners en route to the Bendigo Goldfields. Today, Piper Street is a charming place to wander, gazing at the heritage bluestone buildings that line the street, with an eclectic array of gourmet restaurants and cafés to satiate any foodie, and plentiful antiques, arts and crafts to browse.
Kyneton, along with nearby Daylesford and Hepburn Springs, is renowned for its natural mineral springs and there are plenty of options for washing away the stresses of daily life at one of the region’s health and wellness spas and retreats. To benefit from the healing properties of the mineral-filled and strong-tasting water, fill your water bottle directly from the source at the Kyneton Mineral Springs Reserve.
Walking on water
As we continued north, the golden fields of country Victoria stretched off on either side of the highway, hay bales dotting the horizon, broken only by blink-and-you-miss-it country towns with huge grain silos standing sentinel along the highway. By the time we pulled into the viewing point at Lake Tyrrell it was well and truly time for a lunchbreak.
Just north of the town of Sea Lake, Lake Tyrrell is touted as Victoria’s largest salt lake, and is mostly dry, although at times areas fill with shallow water. In recent years, the lake has become a popular tourist attraction, particularly with Chinese tourists, who come a long, long way to see the natural wonder of the mirrored reflections in the parts of the lake that have water, which on still days create the optical illusion that you’re walking on water, making for an incredible photo.
While this tourism boom is mostly a good thing, it does have its downsides. This is a particularly fragile environment and care must be taken not to damage it. As such, driving is not permitted on the lakebed.
We walked out onto the glistening white saltpan, silent bar the whistling wind sweeping across the vast plain, no tourists in sight. The summer heat rippled across the crusted surface under a wide blue sky, dotted with puffy white clouds. Although the lake is home to a host of reptiles, emus, kangaroos and birds, the only obvious forms of life (except for the very friendly flies) were the scrubby saltbush and the occasional bare branch poking its head up from the salt.
Old salt
We arrived at the Pink Lakes late in the afternoon. The park’s often scorching summer temperatures may be a deterrent to some, and shade is at a premium. It pays to have an awning to provide a bit of shelter at camp. More popular times to visit are autumn and spring, when colourful wildflower displays area drawcard.
Meandering around Pioneer Drive is the easiest way to see the sights in this section of the park. The gravel road loops around the cluster of pink lakes, which get their vibrant pink colour from a particular type of red algae that lives in the salt.
Commercial mining of the salty lake beds began in 1916, originally with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows, and later with horse-drawn scarifiers and scrapers that broke up the salt crust. Afghan cameleers arrived in the area in 1922 and, for many years, the camels became the most reliable means of transporting the salt to the railways at nearby Linga and Underbool.
The mine operated until 1979 when the Pink Lakes were declared a state park, and in 1991the area was incorporated into Murray-Sunset National Park. Some rusting relics of the old harvesting machinery and salt piles remain along the edge of Lake Crosbie on Pioneer Drive and are worth a look.
There are a couple of short bushwalks in the area, including the Kline Nature Walk, a one-and-a-half-hour loop that follows the edge of Lake Crosbie and Lake Kenyon, a one-and a-half-hour loop that circumnavigates Lake Hardy, and a 45-minute loop along one edge of Lake Becking. If you have bikes, a ride around the relatively flat Pioneer Drive would be a nice way to explore the area.
Remote touring
Those with 4WDs can continue north on the sandy tracks that criss-cross the park. It pays to have a good map with you as this part of the park is fairly remote — on my last trip through the park’s centre we didn’t see another soul for two days. En route north, the short trek to the top of Mount Crozier from the campground at the base affords 360-degree views across the park, providing a vantage you just don’t get otherwise. In the north-west corner, not far from the South Australian border, the Shearers Quarters are an interesting place to take a coffee break and look around, providing insight into the area’s pastoral history.
Murray-Sunset National Park protects an important ecosystem of plants and animals that thrive in the semi-arid mallee environment. The mallee vegetation flourishes in the sandy soils, and the park is dotted with belah woodlands and native cypress pine. The low scrub and orange dirt along the undulating tracks is not something you expect to find in Victoria and the sheer isolation and vastness of the landscape is awe inspiring.
The park is popular with birdwatchers and significant sightings may include regent parrots and mallee fowl.
After we finished exploring, we picked a spot in the deserted campground and set up for the night. We wandered out across the expanse of pink-tinged salt, marvelling at the sparkling crust as the wide blue sky changed to pink then purple. As the evening rolled in, lightning flashed in the distance, adding to the otherworldliness you experience when there’s not another soul for miles. We settled in around the campfire while our sausages cooked, watching as the stars appeared above us.
We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning. Magpies stalked in the scrub and galahs squawked overhead as we packed up and headed back down the bumpy dirt road to the highway to continue our journey west.
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