The Lake of parched tears

 

Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, located in the remote deserts of northern South Australia, is the country’s largest salt-lake and lowest natural point, lying about 15 metres below sea level. Most of the time, it is a vast, shimmering expanse of white salt crust, dry under the fierce outback sun. Because it sits at the heart of an arid inland basin, Kati Thanda fills only very occasionally—usually when heavy monsoonal rains fall far to the north in Queensland, sending floodwaters hundreds of kilometres down rivers like the Warburton and Cooper Creek. In rare flood years, the lake transforms into a shallow inland sea teeming with life: waterbirds flock to its shores, algae bloom, and the landscape turns from stark desert to a dazzling mirror of sky and colour. But as the water evaporates under the relentless heat, the lake soon returns to its dry, silent brilliance until the next distant rains arrive. A major flood event filled Kati Thanda in 2025, marking just the fourth time in the past 160 years that the lake has been fully filled.

 

We are hardly graced

By the love of indigo clouds -

Our scorched caress

Is that of a desiccated land

An arid heart

Parched with dusty time

 

Yet, sometimes,

Once in a while,

Discarded joys drift to us

When deluges in distant lands

Bring forsaken hope -

And Kati Thanda comes to life again

 

Even the desert

Can turn blue,

An inland sea of flood

For the myths of Eromanga

To live in us

Even today

 

But we will take it

Every single drop

Every breath

Of moistened kiss

When the earth remains thirsty

Even when the levees break

 

It is a matter of time

Before the eyes turn dry again

Before the flocks leave

And the red desert goes back

To its wayward ways

For Eyre to dry again

 

But look again,

The sands will remember

The patterns will recollect

And the minstrel time

Will sing

We too had a river, a lake, a sea

 

We too knew once

What it was to shed

Tears of blue

As we wait,

Timeless that we are

For the rains to come again,

 

Not in our lands

But someplace else, more blessed

That their twilight seems

Like the sun that couldn’t shine,

That their clouds drench

Hearts we never had…

 

1^st November, 2025

 Cover Image: southasutralia.com