Esperance’s Pink Lake was once so vividly pink it barely looked real. These days the water sits somewhere between white and pale blue, and we completely understand the confusion, plenty of travellers pull up expecting bubblegum and leave scratching their heads. So here is the honest story from just down the road: what happened to the colour, whether it is coming back, and where you can still find a properly pink lake nearby.
The short version: Pink Lake stopped turning pink because a railway line and the South Coast Highway cut it off from the wetland system that used to flush salt into it, and because decades of commercial salt harvesting stripped out too much of that salt. Without very high salinity, the tiny organisms that produced the pink pigment can no longer thrive, so the water stays pale.
What made Pink Lake pink in the first place
The colour came from two salt-loving organisms: an algae called Dunaliella salina and a group of bacteria known as halobacteria. In very salty water, under strong sun and warmth, these microbes produce carotenoid pigments, the same family of pigments that make carrots orange. Pack enough of them into a shallow lake and the whole surface turns pink.
The key word here is salt. The pink only shows up when salinity climbs well above that of seawater. Drop below that point and the microbes fade, and the colour goes with them.
Image Credit: Shire of Esperance
Why Pink Lake lost its colour
Three things stacked up over time:
The lake got cut off from its salt supply. Pink Lake was once the end point of the Lake Warden wetland system, and water would periodically flush through and carry salt into it. When the railway line and the South Coast Highway were built, that connection was severed and the salt stopped arriving. This is widely seen as the biggest single cause.
Too much salt was removed. Commercial salt harvesting ran on the lake for decades. Between the mid 1980s and 2007, more than half of the lake’s salt was taken, with harvest quotas based on a 1986 study now considered flawed. That pushed salinity below the level the pink microbes need.
Higher rainfall diluted what was left. Wetter years added fresh water and diluted the remaining salt further, keeping the lake below the pink threshold.
Put it all together and the delicate salt balance that once made the lake famous simply broke down.
Photo source: ABC News
Pink Lake was originally Lake Spencer
Here is a fun one for the drive out. The lake’s original name is Lake Spencer, given by explorer John Septimus Roe back in 1848. Locals called it Pink Lake for so long that it was officially renamed Pink Lake in 1966. Now that the colour has gone, there have even been proposals to switch the name back to Lake Spencer to save visitors the disappointment. So if you spot both names on maps and signs, they are the same lake.
Will it ever be pink again?
Possibly, though not overnight. The Shire of Esperance commissioned a feasibility study into restoring the colour, and one idea on the table is pumping excess salt brine from nearby Lake Warden into Pink Lake to lift its salinity back up. Left to nature, recovery would depend on salinity slowly rebuilding, which could take a very long time.
Where you can still see a pink lake near Esperance
This is the bit most guides leave out, and it is the question we get asked most. If you have your heart set on pink water, the lake you want is Lake Hillier, on Middle Island in the Recherche Archipelago off the Esperance coast. Lake Hillier stays a strong pink for most of the year. You can’t reach it by road, so the usual way to see it is a scenic flight from Esperance, which takes in the islands and coastline along the way. It is genuinely spectacular, a bright pink oval sitting right beside the deep blue Southern Ocean.Is Pink Lake still worth a visit?
Yes, just go with the right expectations and you will enjoy it. It sits a short drive west of Esperance Pink Lake Holiday Park, it is free, and there are scenic walking trails plus a lookout on the South Coast Highway side where you can see the large historical salt stockpiles. Even without the colour it is a wide, peaceful salt lake with lovely light at sunrise and sunset, a white salt crust that photographs beautifully, and regular birdlife including banded stilts and hooded plovers.
For more scenery close by, have a look at our guide to 9 breathtaking beaches near Esperance, or read up on the town’s past in History of Esperance, WA.
Stay close to Pink Lake
We are just a short drive from the lake and about 2.5km from the Esperance foreshore, which makes us a handy base for the lake, the beaches and town. Take your pick from powered and unpowered sites or self-contained cabins, including pet-friendly options.
Book your stay online and come explore one of Western Australia’s most striking stretches of coast.