Lake Mackay

Lake Mackay is the largest of hundreds of ephemeral salt lakes scattered throughout Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The satellite image documents the appearance of the dry parts of Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert, Gibson Desert, and Tanami Desert.

Named after its European discoverer, Donald George Mackay, Lake Mackay is the second-largest lake in Australia, measuring approximately 60 miles (100 kilometres) east-west and north-south. The darker areas of the lakebed are indicative of some form of desert vegetation or algae, some moisture within the soils of the dry lake, and the lowest elevations where pooling of water occurs. In this arid environment, salts and other minerals are carried to the surface through capillary action caused by evaporation, thereby producing the white reflective surface. Visible are various brown hills scattered across the eastern half of the lake and east-west-oriented sand ridges south of the lake.

Lake Mackay features prominently in the Aboriginal Dreaming narratives of the Western Desert. The main mythological accounts of its origins can be clustered into three distinct themes, all of which contain references to a fierce bushfire that devastated the land and formed the lake.

The lake is the largest in Western Australia and has a surface area of 3,494 square kilometres (1,349 sq mi)

The lake, known as Wilkinkarra to the local Indigenous population, was the birthplace of prominent Indigenous artist Linda Syddick Napaltjarri, and the area in which artist Ronnie Tjampitjinpa grew up.