Lake Tyrrell, Victoria: The pink lake that put a dying town on the map

Julie Pringle parks her vehicle above the dry banks of Lake Tyrrell in Victoria's northwest. Brooding rain clouds stretch across the broad Mallee skies, threatening to disrupt our pre-dawn tour from the farming town of Sea Lake. But with the rain forecast to hold off for a few more hours, and with no hint of a breeze, Julie declares the conditions ideal for creating mirror-like reflections off the surface of the state's largest and oldest salt lake.

"I love it when we get rain clouds here," she says. "The skies open up and talk to you. It's just beautiful."

She leads us out onto the shallow saltpan's crusty surface. Being mid-November, barely any water remains inside the lake. The winter rains that fill it from June to August each year have mostly evaporated, with the winds shifting what's left from one bay to another. At this time of year though, most of the water on the lake's surface has seeped up from below, disguising muddy pools lingering just beneath the surface crust.

As we tiptoe out onto the lake in distinctly unfashionable gumboots, the crunch of dried salt beneath our feet sounds like we're trudging through a bowl of Corn Flakes. Around the lake's edges, the briny crust betrays a rosy tinge that's triggered by mixing spring rains with high salinity levels and algae. Between the months of September and December, that precise chemical process turns this into one of Victoria's rare pink lakes (others are located near Dimboola and in the Murray Sunset National Park, west of Ouyen).

In recent years, the blushing stain and the mirror-like reflections off the surface of the shallow lake have helped turn Sea Lake into one of the state's unlikeliest tourist towns. Prior to 2014, however, young townsfolk couldn't escape it fast enough. Its ageing pub, the Royal Hotel, was on its last legs, reflecting its patronage. And the major supermarket chains had abandoned it. Then a photo of sunset reflections on Lake Tyrrell went viral on Chinese social media, sparking a flood of foreign, then domestic, tourists beating a path north out of Melbourne, injecting some sorely needed funds into the region.

The trickle-on effect of these never-before-seen visitors traipsing into town with tripods over their shoulder, hoping to capture arresting images of the Milky Way arcing over the lake, or of the rich dawn colours mirrored in the water's surface, has been nothing short of astounding. Locals banded together to buy the pub, spending millions to restore it as the hub of social activity in town and turn it into a must-visit attraction. Real estate prices skyrocketed as properties were bought up and rented out through short-term accommodation websites. And as elderly residents inevitably move to bigger towns with better health facilities, young folk who grew up in the Mallee began returning, giving Sea Lake a much-needed energy boost.

In December 2020, a multi-million-dollar tourist installation opened beside the lake in an effort to enhance the experience, and the road there from town was upgraded to minimise the potential for motoring accidents. Before that, a photo gallery and café opened up inside the old bank building in order to showcase the lake's beauty, which had been taken for granted in the past. Then late last year, the disused Buloke Shire Office building on the Calder Highway was repurposed as a brand-new Visitor Centre that's manned entirely by volunteers. One of those volunteers is Julie Pringle.