The dramatic change the ‘wet’ brings to Lake Argyle – in pictures

A comparison of Lake Argyle’s spillway between October 2020 (left) when the lake was at 28% (3,041GL) and February 2023 (right) at 100% capacity (10,763GL). Composite: Benjamin Broadwith

In the yearly boom and bust rainfall cycles of the Kimberley region, Lake Argyle takes on two different forms.

The man-made lake, located 75km south of Kununurra on the Ord River in Western Australia, is around 18 times the size of Sydney harbour and is Australia’s second-largest dam after Lake Gordon in Tasmania.

Ben Broady, a photographer, captured the dramatic change, taking a series of photos of the lake during a record dry period in October 2020 and another in the same spot this month after the area had its biggest “wet” since 2017.

In the dry season, spanning May to October, the lake shrinks, leaving vast areas of dusty and barren earth.

“When those dry photos were taken it had been seven months since we’d had rain, and the surrounding areas just looked flogged,” he says. “I wanted to capture just how low it was.”

“I deliberately went out there in October, because in November, that’s when things start to change.”

When the tropical monsoon soaks the region from November to April, the lake – which is on the land of the Miriwoong people – swells and a palette of green crowds the banks and surrounding land.

During a flood, the lake sprawls across 2,072 sq km. The water seen in the photos makes up less than 5% of the total area of Lake Argyle, Broady says.

In October 2020, when the pictures were taken during the dry season, the lake was at 28% capacity.

“I go for a 4km swim at the lake every Sunday and … there was still a lot of water,” he says.

This month, when the second photos were taken, the lake had reached its capacity.

The peak comes amid record flooding 300km east of Lake Argyle in Fitzroy Crossing, where the water carved a path of destruction, leaving homes uninhabitable and communities and towns isolated.

But the lake is still lower than it was in 2017.

“It used to be really common for the lake to overflow,” said Broady. “In 2017 it went five metres over the spillway, and in 2011 it went nine metres over the spillway.

“But from 2018-2020, we had three terrible [low rainfall] wet seasons in a row and that’s why it got to the lowest level.”

The lake was first filled in 1974 and is crucial for the region’s agriculture industry. It also has the highest density of freshwater crocodiles in Australia.

Before the dam was built, the Ord River, which flows into Lake Argyle, followed similar boom and bust cycles, only flowing during the wet season and shrinking to a series of waterholes during the dry.