Lake George almost lives up to its name

[depakid]

Lake George yesterday ... there may not be enough to go for a dip, but heavy rain means the lake has some water in it for the first time in eight years.
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LAKE GEORGE, north-east of Canberra, has water in it for the first time since 2002. Lake Woytchugga, near Wilcannia, is looking like a water body for the first time in a decade. And in Sydney last week's rain gave the city's catchment its highest inflow since 2007.

''The rain's been great - it's greened everything up,'' said Brian Osborne, who has been running sheep on the east side of Lake George for 77 years.

''I don't know if the drought's broken - the Southern Oscillation Index they go off is still disastrously low - but I was celebrating the fact the forecasters were actually correct,'' Mr Osborne said. ''Usually we just laugh when they say rain's coming.''

Lake George, located on the outskirts of Canberra, was once lapping at the edges of the nearby highway, however years of drought has seen it dwindle to little more than a flat flood plain used for grazing sheep. In the 1990s, the section of the highway that runs adjacent to the lake was duplicated complete with spill overflows along the road to stop flooding, however they've rarely been used.

Helen Bayes from the Australian Quaker Centre at Silver Wattle Point, a conference centre that overlooks the lake, says the last time water was visible was in the late 1990s. "The lake of course is a lake bed which is a great body of water even when you can't see it, it's down below," she told AAP.

Ms Bayes said a few months ago a worker at the centre pulled out one of the old fence posts which runs directly across the middle of the lake bed only to have it fill with water quickly. "So even a few months ago, when the lake looked really dry, there was water up to about 15 centimetres below the surface.

"Now it looks as if the lake bed is streaked with silver - it looks as if there's been a brush drawn across the lake bed in various places, painting it silver. It's really beautiful." Ms Bayes said there was enough water to keep draining out of the escarpment on both sides of the lake for the next couple of weeks. "It may continue to fill up as long as we don't get really hot, drying weather."

More: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/rainfall-revives-lake-george-20100215-o2e4.html