Lake Argyle | |
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Location in Western Australia | |
Location | near Kununurra East Kimberley, Western Australia |
Coordinates | 16°20′08″S 128°44′37″E / 16.3355°S 128.7435°E |
Type | Freshwater reservoir |
Primary inflows | Ord River, Bow River |
Primary outflows | Ord River |
Catchment area | 46,100 km2 (17,800 sq mi) |
Basin countries | Australia |
First flooded | 1971 |
Max. length | 67 kilometres (42 mi) |
Max. width | 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) |
Surface area | 703 km2 (271 sq mi) |
Water volume | 10,763 gigalitres (8.726×10 6 acre⋅ft; 2.582 cu mi)[1] |
Website | www |
References | Water Corporation[1] |
Official name | Lakes Argyle and Kununurra |
Designated | 7 June 1990 |
Reference no. | 478[2] |
Lake Argyle is Western Australia's largest and Australia's second largest[3] freshwater man-made reservoir by volume. The reservoir is part of the Ord River Irrigation Scheme and is located near the East Kimberley town of Kununurra. The lake flooded large parts of the Shire of Wyndham-East Kimberley on the Kimberley Plateau about 80 kilometres (50 mi) inland from the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, close to the border with the Northern Territory.
The primary inflow is the Ord River, while the Bow River and many other smaller creeks also flow into the dam.[4] The lake is a DIWA-listed wetland.[5] Lake Argyle and Lake Kununurra were listed in 1990 as Ramsar Convention protected wetlands.[6] Argyle mine was previously situated here from 1985 until November 2020 following several years of discoveries and yielded 865 million carats of diamonds.