We didn’t hurry in the morning, but even so we were packed up and ready to go just after 10.00 a.m. I had a shower and washed my hair using the nice facilities at our caravan park. The sky was completely clear of clouds, again, and although I hoped for clouds later on, nothing eventuated.
The drive to Lake Ballard is mostly bitumen, with about 20 kms of gravel. It was quite a good road, lots of small corrugations, but we still took it very slowly, about 40 kms an hour. When you can hear every rattle of your gear it makes you very cautious, towing a caravan is different as all the rattling takes place well behind.
On arrival, there were a couple of caravans already parked up. We had no difficulty finding a nice level spot with a view over the lake. It’s all red earth and dull green bushland, but the colours look wonderful towards sunset.
We had lunch, then rested until afternoon tea time. We set off to walk to the Gormley Statues at about 4.00 p.m. and came home after sunset. The lake is muddy near the edges, but when you get to the really salty part it is like walking on firm snow – crystals which crunch underfoot. There were lots of tracks to the statues, plus some car tire tracks. Of course, you are not allowed to drive on the lake, but someone always will.
We stayed out until slightly after sunset, Stephen taking lots of video on the Gopro and me taking photos. I’ve uploaded them to my ipad this morning and see that it is hard to get a bad photo of the scenery here, apart from some lopsided horizons which need fixing.
The statues are a little smaller than you would imagine. Instead of doing 52 I would have done a smaller set and made the individual ones larger. Still, by squatting down for shots I was able to make them appear much bigger. Stephen posed as a statue for me, of course, but not naked – it was a bit too chilly.
We had two caravans pull in close to us during the afternoon. There were also quite a few day visitors walking out to the statues, but no one later in the day when we went out. Overall, it is as magical an experience as I hoped it would be. The 21st is the Winter Solstice and sunset here was at about 5.10 p.m.
We decided to stay two nights, hoping for a bit of cloud either at sunrise or sunset. We have plenty of water and enough food to last until our next town, Leonora.
Yesterday morning we walked up a hill to find a different view of the lake. It was very stoney and we had to watch our feet all of the time. It was another clear, cloudless day.
In the evening we walked behind our camp over to another lake behind a small rise. Not very far.
We spent a lot of time during the day just gazing out at the lake and making out the many statues, very small in the distance. The large island near to us makes a special feature of this view.
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Again, I hoped for a few clouds at sunset, but it was not to be. We felt a bit tired in the evening and opted for an easy dinner of toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches, plus desert.