As unlikely grey nomad attractions go, South Australia’s Lochiel Ness Monster takes an awful lot of beating.
In an Australian landscape littered with giant fibreglass fruit, rusty car sculptures, decorated termite mounds, and painted silos, it takes a lot to turn the heads of veteran caravanners and motorhomers. But, for three decades, the Lochiel Ness Monster or Loch Eel – made from old tyres and pipes – has been doing exactly that.
Very few travellers cruising along the Augusta Highway near the small town of Lochiel fail to notice the ‘monster’ sitting in Lake Bumbunga, and a good many of them stop to take a picture or to have a closer look at the Aussie cousin of the Scotland’s Nessie.
However, all is not well in Lochiel.
In the past few weeks, vandals have apparently decapitated the iconic monster and disappeared with its head. Local businesses are said to be concerned that a headless monster will prove less of a magnet for tourists.
“People flock to the lake because that’s the big drawcard,” Vickii Myhre, from the nearby Jitter Bean Oasis café, told the ABC. “We hear the stories of older couples and they say ‘we used to drive past as kids’ … it’s a shame it’s just gone, someone’s taken it. It would be of no use to anybody.”
She said locals were ‘ropable’ at the theft.
“I actually got a call from a group of photographers from Adelaide, and the lady said we’ve come this way because they wanted to get the pink lake with the Loch Eel,” she said. “They said that the head was gone. There’s just a branch stuck there.”
According to local folklore, the myth of a Lochiel monster reportedly dates back to the 1800s when a bullock team disappeared in the lake’s treacherous sands. However, it wasn’t until the 1980s that its rubbery version emerged.
Happily for monster-loving grey nomads, there is already talk that the local community will soon get together to put a new head on the creature. At the same time, speculation continues to swirl about who stole the original. One local, John Nicholls, told the ABC that it would certainly have been an outside job.
“It’d be a passer-by,” he said. “Geez, if the locals had wanted to pinch it they’d have done it bloody years ago.”
