Blighters on the Landscape

At the end of the week Joe Hockey told Alan Jones the wind farm on Lake George’s eastern edge was a blight upon the landscape, my wife and I drove out there to celebrate her birthday.

We collected a friend, and zig-zaged to the edge of the city, where the suburbs are being swallowed by giant cars. We joined the motorway north. We chatted happily as we bounced off onto Mac’s Reef Road. We swayed up and down amongst the farm-clad hills. We turned left onto gravel. We stopped just short of the Quaker compound. And there we ate lunch, looking across the lake to the windmills, busy in the west wind, blighting the imaginations of angry men, and quietly trying to save the world.

 

The Lake

My like for Lake George stems from the following:

1. No one else seems to notice it.
2. Something particularly Australian about a lake that’s been dry for years and only recently returned.
3. It’s the closest place to home that feels swallowing and spacious like Australia should.
4. What the clouds and light did.
5. Windmills!

Water’s Edge

The risk, I guess, is that this becomes the first ever Lake George fan blog, but we were out there again today. Lured by the promise of the water’s edge, the return of the long lost lake, and weather we woke up to. The west wind and the scudding clouds, and me thinking it was the sort of day best enjoyed surrounded by space.

And so we drove out there, to find it bigger, closer, but still out of reach of the road. So we satisfied our lake hunting impulse by walking out across the flat land of the lake bed towards the glint of water. In front of us the windmills spiraling and light and shade surfing with the clouds riding rising storm.

We turned around with the first drops of rain, just beating the cloudburst to the car, and with me enthusing about the beauty of windmills and as jubilant in my way as the passing westerly storm.

Flood

And the rain continues.

Lake Bed

Flying back from Melbourne yesterday I finally saw lake George, which so far has been nothing more than a great big, flat field. The ghost of a lake, left empty by drought.

Today that view, snatched from a plane window, took us out lake-hunting. Although, in the end, we couldn’t find a way to the part of the lake bed that was actually covered with water. Still we found space, and the sweeping patterns of clouds, trailing east on the winter winds.

On the other side, across the lake bed, and over a distant strip of water, that same wind had brought the wind farm to life. Long loping arms making electricity.

Windmills Swallowed by Cellphone Pixels

Plenty of people hate windmills and what they do to the view, but looking across that ‘lake’ today I realised that, above and beyond the environmental benefits, I love the damn things. Count me a fan for aesthetic reasons. Take a ridge, long ago denuded of trees, and whack up windmills, and the horizon becomes more interesting, more peaceful in a way. And more beautiful too.