01/10/2026
The salt lakes of the Western Australian Wheatbelt never cease to surprise me.
I try to find a balance with my work between areas where we’ve completely changed the landscape, areas that remain almost untouched, and then those fascinating places that sit somewhere in the middle.
These salt lakes are a perfect example. They’re part of an ancient system that has been accumulating salt for tens of thousands of years, long before we began clearing the Wheatbelt for agriculture. Some still sit amongst pockets of their natural habitat, while others have been dramatically altered by the farmland that now surrounds them.
In my time photographing them I’ve learnt that they almost seem to “flower”, much like the wildflowers do in spring. You need substantial winter rains to put water back into the system, followed by the right conditions and a steady rate of evaporation as the lakes begin concentrating again. Salinity, microorganisms, minerals, water depth and the lake bed itself all play a part in what happens next.
When everything lines up you can find almost every colour imaginable sitting alongside one another, reds, pinks, oranges, yellows, greens, blues and some so dark they’re almost black.
