It may not be Nessie, but the Loch-eel in South Australia is a whole lot easier to find and get photographic evidence of, and to add to its charm, it resides in a pink lake.

The town of Lochiel (pronounced lock – eel) sits in the mid north region of the state, around 125 kilometres north of Adelaide and Lake Bumbunga salt lake, is a major employer and tourist attraction for the town.  

Lochiel sits between Yorke Peninsula and the Clare Valley regions and the intensity of the pink lake hue, comes down to a few factors. As with a lot of pink lakes, the shade is the result of a pigment of colour from an algae that grows in the salty environment. Water sitting in the lake at certain times of the year, adds to the brightness and a sunny day helps to complete the picture. It can be a tricky phenomenon to get perfectly timed to see, but spring with all those factors combined, is the likeliest time for seeing it at its bubblegum best.

At other times of the year you can still notice a pink tinge and there’s always the infamous Loch-eel to see looming out of the lake. The town was named after Lochiel Forest in Scotland so it’s easy to draw a link between the Scottish legend and this monster of the Loch.

The original Loch-eel popped up in the lake around the mid 1980’s for travellers to spot as they passed by, and this small creature made of scrap tyres still resides, a bit worse for wear, in the northern end of the lake, but as the legend and popularity grew, so did the eel.

To help perpetuate the popularity, a story from the 1880’s has been resurrected, which tells of a bullock team that sank into the lake’s surface in an artesian bog when taking a shortcut across the lake. When the bullock driver returned to rescue them with some help, they had completely disappeared. Fiction is more interesting than fact, so the myth was sealed of the Loch-eel as being the obvious explanation for their disappearance.

Today as you travel through the area, there is a large parking area for cars and vans at the south end of the lake, where you can then take a short walk to the edge of the lake to see the new, larger, tourist friendly monster which took up residence in 2021.

To get to the edge of the lake, take the easily accessible short loop walk on a defined path to the viewing platform to see the 4 metre tall by 10 metre long Loch-eel, before continuing back to the car park.

Enjoy and beware!

Glenys