Live At The Blue Lake – St Bathans
Daily Photo – Winter at the Blue Lake
As far as man-made lakes go, the Blue Lake at St Bathans is small but impressive, thanks to its striking colour. That’s due to the natural drainage from the surrounding hills filling the lake and mixing with all the leftover bright white quartz sediments, which reflect sunlight back through the clear, mineralised water, resulting in a stunning bluish-green colour.
It all started back in around 1863, when the search for gold brought miners to the area, which was known at the time as Dunstan Creek. Now called St Bathans, a bustling town of more than 2,000 people quickly grew.
One of the main ways to search for gold in the area was by sluicing, where powerful jets of water were blasted at banks of earth, washing gravel into sluice boxes. The boxes then trapped the gold at the bottom. In St Bathans, this method was so popular that the nearby Kildare Hill was transformed into a 168-metre-deep pit. It was only when the pit started getting too close to the town that mining was halted in 1934. Once mining stopped, the huge hole filled with water, creating the beautiful blue lake that we see today.
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