Lake Barlee is an intermittent

salt lake A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per litre). ...

. With a surface area of , it is the second largest lake in

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

Description

Lake Barlee is situated on the Yilgarn block southeast of Youanmi and north of

Bullfinch Bullfinch is a name given to two groups of passerine birds. True bullfinches The true bullfinches are thick-billed finches in the passerine family Fringillidae. They comprise the genus ''Pyrrhula''. These birds are restricted to the Old World, an ...

, on the border between the shires of

Sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

and

Menzies Menzies is a Scottish surname, with Gaelic forms being Méinnearach and Méinn, and other variant forms being Menigees, Mennes, Mengzes, Menzeys, Mengies, and Minges. Derivation and history The name and its Gaelic form are probably derived f ...

. It is more than from west to east, and about from north to south. Lake Barlee and other lakes in the area are

cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...

palaeovalleys, fed predominantly by groundwater flowing through ancient palaeochannels. The channels are filled with

calcrete Caliche () is a sedimentary rock, a hardened natural cement of calcium carbonate that binds other materials—such as gravel, sand, clay, and silt. It occurs worldwide, in aridisol and mollisol soil orders—generally in arid or semiarid regions, ...

s and alluvial clay-quartz units. Like most of the clay playas in the area, it is usually dry but can fill when

tropical cyclone A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

s become rain-bearing depressions after they cross the coast. It fills about once every ten years on average, after which the water usually persists for another six to nine months. When it is inundated, it becomes an important breeding site for

waterbird A water bird, alternatively waterbird or aquatic bird, is a bird that lives on or around water. In some definitions, the term ''water bird'' is especially applied to birds in freshwater ecosystems, although others make no distinction from seabi ...

s. Lake Barlee receives water from direct rainfall and inflow from a multitude of creeks. The bed of the lake is bare, with hundreds of greenstone rock islands of varying sizes. These islands, typically with heights less than , support

samphire Samphire is a name given to a number of succulent salt-tolerant plants (halophytes) that tend to be associated with water bodies. *Rock samphire, ''Crithmum maritimum'' is a coastal species with white flowers that grows in Ireland, the Unit ...

vegetation. When the lake is nearly full or overflowing, at least five of the islands may support large numbers of breeding birds, particularly the

banded stilt The banded stilt (''Cladorhynchus leucocephalus'') is a nomadic wader of the stilt and avocet family, Recurvirostridae, native to Australia. It belongs to the monotypic genus ''Cladorhynchus''. It gets its name from the red-brown breast band fo ...

History

The traditional owners of the area are the

Mantjintjarra Ngalia The Mandjindja or Mantjintjarra are an Aboriginal Australian people of Western Australia belonging to the Western Desert cultural bloc. Country According to Norman Tindale's estimate, the Mandjindja's territory extended over roughly , in the sa ...

peoples, whose range extended from around

Lake Wells Lake Wells is an ephemeral salt lake in the centre of Western Australia, lying in close proximity to Lake Carnegie. It lies east of Wiluna and is at the southern edge of the Little Sandy Desert and south western border of the Gibson Desert. It a ...

in the east, to

Lake Darlot Lake Darlot is an ephemeral lake in the centre of Western Australia, lying approximately east-north-east of Leinster, and north of Leonora in the Goldfields-Esperance region. Its surface elevation is 434 metres above mean sea-level. Discover ...

and Lake Miranda in the west, to

Cosmo Newberry Cosmo Newbery (also spelt Cosmo Newberry) is a small Aboriginal community in Western Australia, east of Perth between Laverton and Warburton in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. In the , Cosmo Newberry had a total popul ...

through to Leonora and Lake Barlee up to Wiluna in the north. Lake Barlee was named by

John Forrest Sir John Forrest (22 August 1847 – 2 SeptemberSome sources give the date as 3 September 1918 1918) was an Australian explorer and politician. He was the first premier of Western Australia (1890–1901) and a long-serving cabinet minister i ...

, who encountered it on 18 May 1869. Forrest's party, which was searching for the lost explorer

Ludwig Leichhardt Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt (), known as Ludwig Leichhardt, (23 October 1813 – c. 1848) was a German explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.Ken Eastwood,'Cold case: Leichhardt's dis ...

, became bogged while trying to cross the salt lake. After extracting their horses, they skirted the lake for nearly a week. On 25 May, Forrest climbed Yeedie Hill and saw the extent of the lake. Forrest named the lake after

Frederick Barlee Sir Frederick Palgrave Barlee (6 February 1827 – 8 August 1884) was Colonial Secretary of Western Australia from 1855 to 1875; Lieutenant-Governor of the British Honduras (now Belize) from 1877 to 1882; and Administrator of Trinidad in 1884. ...

, the

Colonial Secretary of Western Australia The Colonial Secretary of Western Australia was one of the most important and powerful public offices in Western Australia, in the time when Western Australia was a British colony. The Colonial Secretary was the representative of the British Colo ...

Birds

Lake Barlee, along with some small satellite lakes, was identified by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

as a

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA). It supported one of the largest recorded breeding events of the banded stilt, with 179,000 nests counted. Other waterbirds known to breed at the lake include the

black swan The black swan (''Cygnus atratus'') is a large waterbird, a species of swan which breeds mainly in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia. Within Australia, the black swan is nomadic, with erratic migration patterns dependent upon c ...

Australian shelduck The Australian shelduck (''Tadorna tadornoides''), also known as the chestnut-breasted shelduck or mountain duck, is a shelduck, a group of large goose-like ducks part of the bird family Anatidae. The genus name ''Tadorna'' comes from Celtic root ...

pink-eared duck The pink-eared duck (''Malacorhynchus membranaceus'') is a species of duck found in Australia. It has a large spatulate bill like the Australasian shoveler, but is smaller at 38–40 cm length. Its brown back and crown, black and white barre ...

white-headed stilt The pied stilt (''Himantopus leucocephalus''), also known as the white-headed stilt, is a shorebird in the family Recurvirostridae. It is widely distributed with a large total population size and apparently stable population trend, occurring in ...

, and

red-capped plover The red-capped plover (''Charadrius ruficapillus''), also known as the red-capped dotterel, is a small species of plover. It breeds in Australia. This species is closely related to (and sometimes considered conspecific with) the Kentish plover, ...

Gallery

Lake Barlee Map.png Crossing Lake Barlee.jpg, Prospectors crossing Lake Barlee, ''circa'' 1923 Banded stilts 2 Governors Lake Rotto email.jpg, Banded stilts

References

{{reflist Barlee Important Bird Areas of Western Australia Barlee, Lake

Description

History

Birds

Gallery

See also

References