| Lake Ballard | |||||||||||
| Pushpin Map: | Australia Western Australia | ||||||||||
| Pushpin Map Alt: | A map of Western Australia with a mark indicating the location of Lake Ballard | ||||||||||
| Pushpin Label Position: | top | ||||||||||
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location in Western Australia | ||||||||||
| Location: | Goldfields-Esperance, Western Australia | ||||||||||
| Coords: | -29.4258°N 120.7519°W | ||||||||||
| Type: | Salt lake | ||||||||||
| Basin Countries: | Australia | ||||||||||
| Length: | 50km (30miles) | ||||||||||
| Width: | 20km (10miles) | ||||||||||
| Area: | 49000NaN0[1] | ||||||||||
| Embedded: |
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Lake Ballard is an ephemeral salt lake in the Shire of Menzies, Goldfields-Esperance area of Western Australia, with its eastern end about 18km (11miles) north of Menzies.[2] [3] [4]
In 2003, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Perth International Arts Festival the Inside Australia exhibition was commissioned. The artist and Turner Prize winner Antony Gormley installed 51 metal sculptures over an area of 10km2 on the bed of the lake.[5] [6] Each sculpture represented a local resident of Menzies, derived from the laser scans of the town's residents.[7] [8] The statues were to be removed at the conclusion of the festival but remain as a tourist exhibition. It is the largest outdoor art gallery on earth.[9] [10]
The lake is used as a breeding site for banded stilts following major flood events.[11] The stilts nest in large close-packed colonies on low islands in ephemeral inland salt lakes such as Lake Eyre, Lake Barlee and Lake Ballard. The last recorded nesting on the lake was in 1995 following the aftermath of Cyclone Bobby.[12] The lake, along with the neighbouring Lake Marmion some to the east, has been identified by BirdLife International as a 984km2 Important Bird Area (IBA), because it has supported a high proportion of the known banded stilt mass breeding events.[13]