Health warnings have been issued for fish caught in the larger lakes system, and commercial prawning was banned last week along Ninety Mile Beach because of the toxic build-up. But in Lake Tyers, protected from the sea by a sandbar, the water is clean and the prawns delectable. Locals, who are free to wade the shallow lake catching prawns for household consumption and bait, are making the most of it during the dark of the moon each month - the optimum period in the growing cycle of prawns. As the evening star comes out, so do the locals, transforming the lake into a surreal fairyland of lights as anything up to 70 people stalk their prey. But everyone is quiet.
Silence hangs heavy over each little pool of light.
There is an art to it, of course. Barry Smith, a plumber who lives in the hamlet of Lake Tyers, doesn't think he has quite mastered it yet. It might have something to do with his fascination with other tiny lives caught in the glow of his underwater spotlight that distracts him from the chase. It is a veritable aquatic nursery under the surface in Lake Tyers, made all the richer by the fact that the lake's catchment is almost undisturbed by human activity. The floods punched out the sandbar, allowing spawn to enter the lake for the first time in three years.