This Is Not A Photo Opportunity

Lake Argyle, WA, 01.06.2015

Kununurra has been called a white elephant and it’s a fair description, flying over desert and seeing this small oasis of greenery suddenly appear out of nowhere. Thanks to the time difference between NT and WA, I arrive in Kununurra before I’ve left Darwin. As a result, I have a few hours to kill before I can check into the hotel and the two realistic options to fill that time: a drive to Wyndham or a drive down to Lake Argyle. Lake Argyle wins out fairly easily, not because it’s a slightly shorter journey but because water has brought me to this part of the country and that water, and indeed Kununurra’s existence, is totally dependent on Lake Argyle.

It’s one of those car trips that you do based on the signpost in town pointing you in the right direction and then don’t see any other signposts until the turn off. There’s obviously no telephone signal but I had reached a point where I’d decided if there wasn’t a signpost in the next 30 minutes that I would turn around as I’d obviously missed the turn. Thinking about it afterwards, there was no need for the slight panic as the road hits the WA/NT border not far after the turn and that boundary would be a marked. It’s a nice drive down and there’s a few stops on the side of the road to take a few photos.

When I eventually get to Lake Argyle I make a pitstop at the caravan park to get something to drink, having made the 80km trip without anything to drink in the car. The caravan park is perched on the top above the lake and has some higher views of it. I also drive via a couple of lookouts down and across the dam.

The dam isn’t what I expected in the slightest, given that it holds the much-publicised 26 times the water that’s in Sydney Harbour. I expected it to be a lot higher than it is. The road across the dam leads down to the hydro power station and ends shortly after in a picnic area.

One thing I did notice from these couple of hours is that people, especially if they’re parents, look at you differently when you’re walking around with a DSLR. Or maybe it was just a touch of paranoia.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2015 at 8:00 am. It is filed under Landscape Photography and tagged with June 2015, Kununurra, Lake Argyle, Landscape Photography, Ord River, WA, Western Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.