Lake Beeac

Lake Beeac, a hypersaline endorheic lake, is located beside the small town of Beeac in the Lakes and Craters region of the Victorian Volcanic Plains of south-west Victoria, in southeastern Australia. The 560-hectare (1,400-acre) lake is situated about 19 kilometres (12 mi) northeast of Colac, and its high salinity gives it a milky-blue colour. The lake is part of the Ramsar-listed Western District Lakes site, and enjoys international recognition of its wetland values and some protection for its waterbirds.^[5]

Wildlife

Despite its extreme salinity, Lake Beeac supports brine shrimp which in turn feed water birds such as the banded stilt and the red-necked avocet.^[5] Birds have been known to come from as far as Siberia and China to eat the lake's shrimp.^[6] The lake is an important habitat for wetland water-birds. The lake forms part of the Lake Corangamite Complex Important Bird Area, so identified by BirdLife International because it sometimes supports globally important numbers of waterbirds.^[7]

History

Between the late 1860s and the 1950s, salt works at Lake Beeac and other nearby lakes produced commercial quantities of salt.^[5][8] The Melbourne spice merchant Henry Berry established a salt works at Lake Cundare, just north of Beeac, in 1868 which produced salt by a boiling and crystallising process. The works produced a fine salt for domestic consumption under the label "Tower of London". Production ceased in 1895.^[9]

Lake Beeac was the main lake in the area used for the collecting of naturally crystallised salt during the summer months. This process produced a coarse salt that was sold for agricultural and industrial purposes. Production depended on the weather: during the hot dry summer of 1921, 3000 tonnes were produced, but in a wet summer no salt at all could be collected. Commercial production ceased in 1954, by which time cheaper production elsewhere had made the Lake Beeac salt uneconomical.^[10]

See also

1. ^ ^{a b} "Lake Beeac (VIC)". Gazetteer of Australia online. Geoscience Australia, Australian Government.
2. ^ "An Audit of the Ecological Condition of Australian Rivers" (PDF). Environment Australia (PDF). Government of Australia.
3. ^ "Lake Beeac (entry 7621)". VICNAMES. Government of Victoria.
4. ^ "Map of Lake Beeac, VIC". Bonzle Digital Atlas of Australia. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
5. ^ ^{a b c d} "Lake Beeac". Colac... a community website. Retrieved 1 December 2010.
6. ^ "Beeac". Colac Otway Shire Council. Archived from the original on 16 February 2011. Retrieved 1 December 2010.
7. ^ "Lake Corangamite Complex". Important Bird Areas factsheet. BirdLife International. 2011. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
8. ^ Dawn Missen & Anne Trigg, Beeac: Winds of Change 1860–2010, Dawn Missen & Anne Trigg, Colac, 2011, pp. 74–75.
9. ^ Norman Houghton, Scrapers and Boilers: Beeac's Lake Salt Trade 1868–1968, Norman Houghton, Geelong, 2016, pp. 2–16.
10. ^ Houghton, pp. 22–25.

• v
• t
• e

• Lakes portal
• Category
• Commons