While travelling high in the skies above Western Australia, Shayna Daniels spotted something out of the plane window that left her stunned. Dotting the ground below was an endless chain of tiny salt lakes, varying in size and colour.
Shayna, who lives in Perth, was travelling to Melbourne for a conference when she noticed the spectacle 30,000 feet below her. As some Qantas planes offer wifi, Shayna was able to message her partner and soon found out the pastel pools were part of the Lake Grace system, around 320km southeast of Perth.
“I had heard about them, they didn’t look how I thought they were going to look. I thought it was just one big salt lake,” she told Yahoo News. “I didn’t realise it was the little colourful pockets of minerals and microbes and stuff, which was really cool.”
The chain of lakes stretches for more than 100km, with each pool displaying a different colour. Source: Shayna Daniels
She wasn’t completely wrong – Lake Grace is a large shallow lake comprised of two interconnected salt water basins, Lake Grace North and Lake Grace South. Measuring more than 25km long, it’s one of the state’s largest inland salt lakes.
The chain of smaller lakes stretches across the Wheatbelt region for more than 100km. They once formed part of an ancient river system 20 million years ago.
Shayna watched as the trail of lakes continued to dot the landscape, estimating there would’ve been “hundreds, if not thousands” of them.
“There were heaps, it was such a huge space,” she said.
The colour of the water varied from lake to lake, showing off shades of blue, pink, green, orange and white.
Online, people said the landscape looked like a “paint pallet” or a collection of Skittles, but the bright colours are a result of varying amounts of water, sediment and bacteria.
Shayna said she’s already planning a day trip to Lake Grace to see them up close.
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