Lake Eyre Flights

We flew over Lake Eyre in 1974 in an F28 Fokker Friendship on the way to Alice Springs (and then drove back to Adelaide in a VW Kombi camper with 4 adults and 2 kids on board, but that is another story).
There was absolutely no doubt that it was FULL.

Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

How long does the water stay at a significant level Peter?

No idea really MH, but in 1974 I reckon it was months not weeks.
Some of the rivers on the W side flow in either direction depending on where the rain falls, others might do the same, so that might be interesting too...

Not sure where this pic shows (it was south of the previous pic) but there were very large areas of water outside the normal lake boundaries. The main lake seemed to be clearer water.

Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

When you can't see the other side from an F28, you realise just how big it is.

Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

I can remember Winter 1974 in the S.E. Wheatbelt of W.A. as a Winter of constantly flooding rains.
We had a dry Autumn, and I can remember building our 60' x 40' workshop in the approximately first 3 weeks of June 1974 - and every day of those 3 weeks was sunny and fine, giving us superb working weather.

We finished the workshop on the 19th of June - and on the 20th June it started to rain - and it virtually never stopped raining, until the end of September that year!!

The S.E. Wheatbelt crops in the regions between Narembeen, Kondinin, Hyden, Lake King, Lake Grace, Dumbleyung and Wagin, went under water for kilometre after kilometre, until they looked like rice paddies.

I can recall driving along the Karlgarin Hill North Road, about mid-August 1974, from the Kondinin-Hyden Road to Whyte Road (a distance of about 15kms) - and the floodwaters rarely got below halfway up the doors of my HQ Holden ute, for that entire 15kms.

Huge sections of the S.E. W.A. Wheatbelt were in similar condition. Major hwys throughout the region were closed for weeks, as the floodwater flow took ages to subside.
Crops were an absolute wipeout in the S.E. that year, quite a number of wheat receival points never even opened through the area.

Funnily enough, that disastrous 1974 W.A. Wheatbelt flood followed on the heels of the even more disastrous Jan 1974 floods in Brisbane.

I seem to recall the flood that filled Lake Eyre in 1974, came from the same weather system that flooded Brisbane?

Cheers, Ron.

Interesting Ron, I thought back to 1974. We were living in Lake Grace at the time but I do not remember flooding. I think we moved to the very dry Merredin in 1975.