Lake Mackay

The Lake Mackay is one of many dried salt lakes, which is located in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. He was discovered on July 9, 1930 with a flyover and after the organizer of that large-scale land reconnaissance aircraft named in the interior of Australia Donald George Mackay.

Location

The lake is located in the Great Sandy Desert, Gibson Desert and Tanamiwüste. The Lake Mackay extends about 100 km from east to west, south-westerly and north-easterly direction, and is the largest lake in Western Australia. It covers an area of about 3494 km ².

On aerial photographs of Lake Mackay is marked by different colors: The darker points on the lake bottom have desert vegetation or algae, some moisture in the soil of the dry lake and the deepest layers, where gathers some water out. In the arid region, salts and other minerals can be brought to the surface by evaporation caused by capillary action, whereby the white, reflective surface. Visible are numerous brown hills in the eastern half of the lake and from east to west running sand dunes south of the lake.

The Lake Mackay is known for stories of the Dreamtime and its importance for the Aboriginal people of the Western Desert. The main mythology consists of three themes, all of which have bush fires of the sort that devastated the country and formed ..

The salt lake is called by the local Aboriginal Wilkinkarra and is the birthplace of the famous Aboriginal artist Linda Syddick Napaltjarri.

The hare large Lake Mackay Hare - wallaby lived in the Northern Territory between Mt Farewell and Lake Mackay. It died out in the 1930s to the 1940s. The Aborigines at that time showed the Europeans only a skull of this animal, which is now in the South Australian Museum.