History
In the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime the lake was inhabited by a monster known as the Muldjewangk.
Edward Wilson, visiting the lake in the 1850s described it as follows:"Lake Alexandrina is the finest sheet of fresh water I ever saw. Indeed so formidable did it look, with a stiff wind blowing up quite a sufficient swell to make one seasick, that I could scarcely believe it to be fresh. Such is the fact however. It is forty or fifty miles long by twelve or fifteen wide and the shores around it receded into the dim distance until they become invisible, in the way which we are accustomed only with ideas of salt water. Supplied almost entirely by the Murray, the whole lake retains the muddy tinge of which I have spoken, and this sadly detracts from the otherwise beautiful appearances of this magnificent sheet of water."
In 2008, water levels in Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert became so low that large quantities of acid sulphate soils threatened to form. The soils on the lake beds are naturally rich in iron sulfides. When exposed to the air, such as may occur in a time of severe drought, the sulfides oxidize, producing sulfuric acid. The barrages now prevent seawater inflows that have prevented this phenomenon in every drought since the last ice age. A weir has been proposed near Pomanda Island to protect upriver water supplies should it become necessary to open the barrages.
Read more about this topic: Lake Alexandrina (South Australia)
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“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)