Just nicked this cutting from the ABC website.



I just went for a drive out the Lake, its beautiful out there, first time it is full since I was a little kid!

I just put up some pics in the gallery of what it looks like full here Your Home Town (New Section in the Gallery)

ABC Online

Lake Dumbleyung's back :: ABC Western Australia

[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/wa/stories/s1368878.htm]

ABC Western Australia | Story Index | Lake Dumbleyung's back

Lake Dumbleyung's back

Sunday, 5 June 2005

Presenter: Marshall Martin



Lake Dumbleyung as a former lake - before the rain.The West Australian wheatbelt's good autumn rains have given us back the Lake on which Donald Campbell set his world land speed record. Lake Dumbleyung is at the end of Karen Ward's property, and she's happy to bring the world up-to-date.



Ironically, the lake had a water ski clubhouse right through the dry years until the rains came. "Unfortunately when the winds went through three weeks ago they blew the clubhouse down, so they've got a bit of work to do," predicts Karen.

This little detail won't deter the skiers, though. "Some young guys actually went out yesterday," says our guest "...there'll be lots of water sports going on - canoeing and skiing and maybe some yachting."

Even now, though, Karen Ward reckons the lake's still got room to grow. "When the lake's full, it's actually fifty five square kilometres," she says,"...but it's not actually full at the moment. Everybody keeps saying it's full and the reports are that it's 53% full, but my husband who's farmed around the lake since the 1960s says that it's only a third full. And believe me he'd know." twenty four yachts



Karen , however, certainly knows her lake history: "They had the Lake Dumbleyung Turf Club in 1908; the first inland sailing club was in 1918 and then it was sort of formed again in 1967. At it's peak it had twenty four boats or twenty four yachts," she says.

And Lake Dumbleyung's always been a bird watchers paradise. "In 1987 they counted four hundred different species of species," recalls Mrs Ward. In the last month she reckons that the bird life's returned in droves - including swans.

In was on December 31 1964 that Donald Campbell disturbed the bird life when he set his speed record. Do Dumbleyung people remember or care? "Everybody remembers," says the Lady of the Lake. "My husband was there when he did it and yeh it's actually quite significant, and they're actually trying to set up a museum in memory of it which we're trying to get off the ground...it's our claim to fame," says Karen.

Now that Lake Dumbleyung's got water back in it, maybe it can even have a claim to fame as a place to ski, paddle, yacht or picnic - rather than as a former lake. Karen's hoping.


Karen Ward, Dumbleyung property owner

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shire web
http://www.dumbleyung.wa.gov.au/
The local council maintains a website.