Amateur Photographer
BLUE LAKE – ST BATHANS
The St Bathans Blue Lake is an old mining pit. By the 1930s, miners had created the deepest mining pit in the southern hemisphere – but it had started to encroach on the town. So, it was abandoned and allowed to slowly fill with water, where the remaining minerals in the soil gave the lake a distinctive emerald colour.
800 metres long and 50 metres deep, the Blue Lake is the result of water filling the excavations carried out by the Kildare mine over 70 years. A 120-metre hill became a 58-metre deep pit, where a massive 68.8-metre hydraulic mining lift operated until the mine was abandoned in 1934.
Full view out across the whole lake and the surrounding countryside, beautiful in its own small valley.
Looking out across the left side of the lake and the loop track.
Taken from the entrance way down to the lake.
This view is looking across to some of the tailings that are left behind.
The sides of the lake are covered in mounds on tailings from the gold field days, in many amazing formations.
Another new across the lake and the hillside behind it which you can also walk around.
