Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

The death of Bibra Lake

When I was a kid one of the places I used to occasionally ride to with my mates was Bibra Lake. I'm referring to the late 1950s. In those days it was surrounded by bushland. It was reached by a narrow North Lake Road. North lake is a few hundred metres north of Bibra Lake and was enclosed by dilapidated fences of an apparently not very productive farm.

The bush on the western side of Bibra Lake was thick and shady. There were narrow tracks which could only be traversed by walkers, or by kids on bikes. The lake itself was not easily reached because of a protective boundary of reeds growing in the squishy, but natural mud. These reeds supported a vast population of spiders and other insects, so penetration to the water's edge was not really an enticing option.

As I recall, the lake always had water in it. Nevertheless, the level changed seasonally, and in one summer dropped low enough to expose a stolen safe someone had dumped. Why anyone would lug a safe through the reeds and out into the lake to get rid of it is one of life's mysteries.

The lake had a large population of freshwater tortoises. The bird population was diverse, as was the native flora of the area. The place was a paradise for adventurous boys like me to visit.

Times have changed. The local authority established a landfill site on the southern end to dump garbage and particularly thousands of tons of rotting sheepskins and other bye-products from nearby industries in the shire of Cockburn. These soon began to leach into the lake.

Someone else decided that the bushland I had once enjoyed on the western side would be better if it was replaced by a grassed picnic area and some playground equipment. Over the years this 'public facility' was added to with car parks large enough to take tourist buses and a stone wall to keep the birds and turtles from encroaching on the humans' newly developed paradise. Any connection with nature could be done via a jetty, which now extends over bare dry sand. Nowadays the water is beyond the jetty, encased in a fetid artificial moat, polluted with slimy green algae. For good measure there are some drains running into it from the car parks. Nothing quite like an oily top up when it rains.

Beyond the moat is a large island of dry mud. This was once the lake bed, originally always submerged in summer.

The eastern side of the lake was no-mans-land as far as us kids were concerned. We could see from the western side that it was beyond our capabilities. No so for the local authority. A concrete cycle path was installed around the entire lake in the late twentieth century, proving once again the superiority of humans over nature. Now the eastern side is weed infested and rapidly degrading. There's a jetty on that side too, proudly constructed maybe twenty years ago for bird watchers. It too is now little more than a ramp above dry land.

My wife and I visited the western side of the lake last Friday. We were saddened to see what the place has become. It's now a tacit monument to almost total environmental destruction by human effort. Some people might like to blame global warming, but that's a cop out.

I've put a folio of images on my Picasa site. Click the image below to see them:

Bibra
Lake - 4 April 2008

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!