“There’s nothing to see there”.

Inspired by a comment made to me while checking into a small country pub, camera slung over my shoulder. She says “what are you going to be photographing” I answer, “I’m going out to Lake George to have a look around”. “Ohh” she says, “There’s nothing to see there”. Which isn’t really true at all. Lake George is a shimmering plain, over 25 kilometers along one length and 10 wide, it’s an endorheic lake, it has no outflow of water to either a river or to an ocean. When it fills the only place for the water to go is back into the earth, seeping down into the plain A million years old, baking under an Australian sun, sometimes with a sheen of shallow water stretched across it’s surface, but mostly, now, nothing. The indigenous peoples of the area used the name of Werriwa, or bad water, when it does have water it’s as salty as seawater. And haunted by Bunyips. There’s still a mystery about the place, the locals will tell you that, mirage like, the lake will fill and empty quickly and without warning, in the 1960’s there was so much water a yacht club held regular races. Tragically in the 1950’s two mass drowning’s added to the mystery of the place, five army cadets drowned and 18 months later a Queanbeyan man, his wife, and three children perished It’s a hard place to look at, it’s flat ,there’s nothing to grab hold of, your eye darting across the plain trying to focus on something, you see things out of the corner of your eye and swing around to look, but there’s nothing there, it’s only when you get down closer to the ground when you begin to see the beauty all around. It seems after all there’s plenty to see here, you just need to know where to look.