Lake George is a large natural lake to the north of Canberra. Its indigenous name is Weereewa. The Federal Highway connecting Canberra to the Hume Freeway to Sydney runs along its western shore. As I drive from Canberra to Sydney, about half-an-hour from home the highway rises up the small elevation of Geary’s Gap, the break in the line of hills that mark that western edge of the Lake. Just before the car tops the rise, I always think ‘How much water will there be in the Lake?’ The view may be of water that’s almost lapping the edge of the highway. At other times there is an expanse of bleached paddock, with sheep grazing and fencelines stretching across to a mirage on the far side – in fact not a mirage but water on the Bungendore side of the lake. Very often I see a fenceline, which runs from making a line in the waving grass to making a gradually diminishing line in the blue-grey water.

These changes in water level in Lake George have caught the settler imagination – despite the fact that such changes are a common feature of many Australian water bodies. Since European occupation the Lake has dried up at least three times and at other periods a pleasure-steamer took Sydney tourists on excursions over the Lake. Fantastic ideas have accounted for the changes in water level: it is related to the depth of a lake in New Zealand or balances the level of the Blue Lake at Mt Gambier. When Lake Burley Griffin was formed by the damming of the Molonglo River in Canberra, some locals expressed a fear that the new lake would ‘do a Lake George’ and disappear. In fact, its depth is a response to rainfall in its catchments.