Looking back at an item from our April 2008 newsletter

The Lake –a contribution from a member.
I take a different track and come upon what was once a small pond. It is filled with crisp
brown reeds and nearby there are some rather derelict picnic tables. I notice a couple of
long-faded signs showing a diagrammatic swimmer struck through with a now almost
invisible line: “No swimming!” It suddenly dawns on me: this must be the lake! Several
neighbours asked if I’d been to the lake when I mentioned that I go walking in our local
Blackhill Conservation Park. The word conjured a European image in my mind’s eye of an
expanse of deep blue water sparkling in sunlight that I found very hard to reconcile with
what I know of the bush of Blackhill that I’ve been visiting and enjoying for many years. Of
course to born and bred South Australians any geographical feature capable of holding
water might be described as a lake, no matter how devoid of moisture. This pond-shaped
hollow may well fill with water for weeks on end in the wettest of wet winters, or even after
heavy downpours, when we’re not in the middle of the worst drought on record, a one in a
thousand year drought as it has been called, this blisteringly dry summer.

Claire Bockner