Lake Argyle

Lake Argyle is Australia's second largest man-made lake. It was created to develop the Ord River Irrigation Scheme and covers around 1000km2. It is home of the famous Argyle Diamond Mine which is the largest producer of diamonds in the world. This is located on the far side of the lake, so is inaccessible unless you pay to do a mine tour (which I was told was around $800 pp). As well as being the largest producer of diamonds in the world it is also famous for the pink diamonds that are mined there. 

It is also the location of Zebra Rock, which is only found in this part of the world! One of my "wishlist" items was to go to the zebra rock mine but we were too late in the year and it had closed for the season. I was so very disappointed by this. But we had bought some small samples of zebra stone from NT Rare Rocks in Katherine. I definitely recommend this as a place to shop for zebra stone and other rare stones. 

Zebra stone - how amazing is it???

(source: http://www.lakeargyle.com/explore-and-learn/pink-diamonds-zebra-stones/)

We stayed at Lake Argyle, which everyone raves about for the boat cruises and the infinity pool. I have to say, I didn't think it was good value but everything up in the north is so expensive you just have to learn to cop it.. Tilda and I enjoyed a swim as we were feeling much better and the infinity pool was nice, but it  wasn't overwhelmingly wonderful, as some people had told us. But it was a nice place to stay and if you do go there, don't just do a cruise, but make sure you also drive over the dam wall and down to the park at the river side. It is very pretty and worth taking the time to look. We watched a crocodile swimming in the ORd River from the lookout above the dam wall, which was very awesome as you could see its body undulating backwards and forwards as it swam. It looked like it was stalking some birds in the edge of the river but they all flew off as it got close, so we'll never know for sure.

Ord River dam wall from downstream

Ord River below the