Review - Paul Lockyer's Lake Eyre: A Journey Through the Heart of the Continent

READING Lake Eyre: A Journey Through the Heart of the Continent, the late Paul Lockyer's passion is paramount.

Lake Eyre by Paul Lockyer

WHEN Paul Lockyer spoke about Lake Eyre to his sons, his eyes would light up. Its solitude and mystery appealed to him.

During drought, the late ABC television journalist witnessed local farmers struggling, but he also watched them thrive after floods that followed.

Lockyer dedicated the past few years to getting to know the Outback lake and the locals who called the surrounding towns home.

During Lockyer's 40-year career, he reported on the lake for ABC news documentaries Lake Eyre (2009) and Return to Lake Eyre (2010).

It was while on a filming trip in August 2011 that Lockyer, cameraman John Bean and pilot Gary Ticehurst died in a helicopter crash.

Seven months after their deaths, the ABC has released the book Lake Eyre: A Journey Through the Heart of the Continent.

Lockyer had been working on the book in the months leading up to his death, and it includes spectacular photography by Bean and Ticehurst.

Lockyer was fascinated by rural stories and was attracted to the vastness of Lake Eyre.

When reading the book, Lockyer's passion is paramount: "For years on end it's a starkly desolate place," he writes.

"Out on the rock-hard salt, there's an eerie sense of emptiness and unreality, heightened by a shifting, dancing horizon. In this vast void, constructed over millions of years, there's a profound feeling of man's insignificance."

Lake Eyre by Paul Lockyer
ABC Books, $59.99