Wayatinah Dam

Instead of driving back to the Lyell Highway straight away, Andrew and I took a detour left off Long Spur Road and arrived at an impasse with the Wayatinah Dam ahead.  I had hoped we could drive across but this wasn’t to be.

Nevertheless the water level was low and it was easy to walk across and connect with the road from Wayatinah township a few kilometres away.

Decades ago thousands of tonnes of rock had been blasted to create a slipway beyond the Dam and the Lagoon. The scale of that effort was very impressive.  Clearly huge volumes of water had passed over the Dam in the past; these hard volcanic rocks were somewhat smooth.

 

Wayatinah Lagoon backed up to the dam wall.

 

Looking across the Lagoon gave me an immense sense of calm.

Examples of the flowering vegetation:

Later we drove through the Wayatinah township.  Michelle’s aerial photo shows the town on a cleared hill with some of the Wayatinah Lagoon visible.

After passing through the town, we proceeded down to the dam wall and were met with locked gates.

A sense of the scale of the town in relation to the Lagoon in relation to the Dam can be seen in my aerial photograph.