Recent Outback rainfall has brought the environment to life along the Oodnadatta Track and around Lake Eyre … and grey nomads and other travellers are loving it.
“They’re quite in awe of how the lake is looking at the moment, and the reflections off the water are just stunning,” Marree Hotel publican, Rebecca Turner, told the ABC. “With the rain that we’ve had, outback South Australia has just come alive and we’re finding more and more people coming up and wanting to do flights over the lake.”
One of the most startling things that grey nomads have seen is that there are suddenly billions of tiny fish ‘fighting to get upstream’ in Outback creeks. Ms Turner went to investigate the phenomenon in Margaret and Stuart creeks, and she said neither she nor her family had seen anything like it in the five years they had been running the Outback pub.
“There are two creeks mainly on the Oodnadatta Track that have billions and billions of tiny different fish,” Ms Turner told the ABC. “We worked out there was probably six different varieties, and I’m no fish expert by any stretch of the imagination, but we worked out there was probably at least one shrimp variety … and possibly the Lake Eyre hardyhead was in there too.”
Species such as the desert hardyhead survive by moving from one waterway to another to find a permanent source of water, with the fish eggs laying dormant in dry river beds between wet spells.
“It was just amazing to see so many fish in one area all fighting to get upstream and cross the concrete creek crossing,” said Ms Turner. “People often say it’s the desert and there’s nothing out there, but Outback South Australia and the desert just have so much to offer and the creeks are a perfect example of how much wildlife is out in the area.”
* Are you near Lake Eyre at the moment? Have you been amazed at how the rains have transformed the desert environment? Comment below.
