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One of the Pink Lakes.
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The Pink Lakes of Sunset Country - Far North-west Victoria
The Pink Lakes are on the southern edge of the much larger Murray-Sunset national park, located in Victoria's far north-west corner. The Pink Lakes was declared a state park in 1979 while the much larger Murray-Sunset NP was proclaimed in 1991.The Pink Lakes are so named because of their colour during late summer. A red pigment, carotene, is secreted from the alga and is best seen early or late in the day or when it’s cloudy. The lakes generally evaporate over summer leaving concentrated salt crusts over black mud.
There are more than seventy significant plant species to be found here including Victoria's largest flower, the Murray lily, the restricted silvery emu-bush and the blue-leafed mallee. Grasslands, saltbush, buloke, porcupine grass and mallee eucalypts dominate the flat, expansive landscape with pockets of native cypress-pine and Belah woodlands scattered throughout.
Murray-Sunset National Park is one of the few regions in Victoria where the red kangaroos can be seen in numbers. The park is home to a number of threatened species - they include the paucident planigale, a small carnivorous marsupial, the slender yellow and green regent parrot, and the Millewa skink. Other notable birds include the mallee fowl, pink cockatoos and white-browed tree creepers.
On our latest trip we saw a lot of lizards including bearded and mallee dragons.
Salt was commercially harvested from the lakes between 1916 and 1975. Salt harvesting has now ceased but there are still salt stock piles and a display on the edge of Lake Crosbie.
All of the tracks within the park are best suited for 4WD vehicles, although conventional vehicles can use the Pink Lakes track from Linga on the Mallee Highway west of Ouyen.
There are excellent walking tracks in the Pink Lakes area.
There’s a number of camping sites at the Pink Lakes including on the southern shore of Lake Crosbie, the largest of the four lakes, which has toilets, gas barbecues, picnic tables and fireplaces.
Our book, ‘Bushtracks of Victoria’ have a number of enjoyable 4WD treks through this region.