A THIRSTY LAND......AUSTRALIA

Waiting for the Tide

At Ballarat Yacht Club, on Victoria's Lake Wendouree, a boat sits on baked mud, still lashed to the jetty. ccc
Out of Water
The shrinkage of the Hume Weir dam, near Bethanga, in the state of Victoria, left thousands of fish high and dry.c

Salt of the Earth

Near Nyah West, Victoria, large swathes of farmland have been abandoned because of salinity.

Blowing Away

Swollen by the drought, a dust storm approaches the town of Nevertire, in central New South Wales.c

Desperate Horde

Drawn by artesian water, kangaroos infest Oxley Station, a cattle property in western New South Wales. cc

Fading Hope

At this farm at Wycheproof, in northern Victoria, the drought seemed to break last year, but the wheat crop failed for want of follow-up rain c

Small Respite

A girl wades in Victoria's Laanecoorie Reservoir after brief showers covered the hard-baked mud with water. cc

Slow Death

A sheep is trapped in drying mud near Ballarat, Victoria.

Bare Horizon

At drought-stricken Ulonga Station, in New South Wales, the few surviving sheep had to be hand fed.

Lethal Error

Only one paddock on this farm at Coonamble, New South Wales, had a water trough. When its gate was accidentally left shut, a flock of sheep perished.

No More River

Mark Hinman and his son Thomas crouch in the bone-dry Combo waterhole, on Queensland's Diamantina River.

Funny Pics

The World's Highest Waterfall

Angel Falls, Venezuela (also called Salto Angel) is the Earth's highest uninterrupted waterfall. It is 979 metres (3,230 feet) tall - think of it as 2.5 times as tall as the Empire State Building and full 15 times higher than Niagara Falls!

Located in the Canaima National Park, in southeastern Venezuela, the falls start from the nameless creek that meanders through the series of highly-fractured crevices and gorges on top of a "Tepuy", or table-top mountain. The water then bursts into the void and plunges uninterrupted 2,421 feet to the river and more cascades below.

In a season of highest water, the single waterfall splits into three streams - sometimes even more, which together become a giant veil of water.

How to get to the Angel Falls? Not so easy.. You would need to hook up with a flight from Caracas or Ciudad Bolivar to get to the Canaima camp, from where you'd start your trip along the river to the base of the falls. This page lists the complete directions. The travel guide even says that on cloudy days you can not see the falls (real let-downer after all this trouble to get there) -

This is the most accessible viewpoint to photograph the falls:

In the morning the rocks are colored pink from a rising sun:

The view from the top is fantastic enough to inspire a multitude of "Lost World" legends (including the famous Conan Doyle book), not to mention the table-top mountain itself - a wonder-world of vegetation and species found nowhere else on Earth. It is truly an Island in Time, discovered by the civilized world only a hundred years ago - an ancient landscape shrouded in mystery.