Milang

Milang is the largest town on Lake Alexandrina (the only town!) It has a pub, bakery and a small convenience store. There are public toilets and a caravan park. It is a 4 or 5 hour sail from Goolwa.

From Goolwa follow the channel markers past Clayton and Rat Island where they slowly open up and you enter onto the lake proper. After rounding Pt Sturt a bearing of 323 degrees true will leave you with a 12 km sail to Milang. As mentioned previously, the lake is regarded as open water and you are required to carry flares and PFD1’s amongst other mandatory requirements.

There are two channel markers out into the lake off Pt Sturt – these mark the southern edge and the end of a 4km sandbar that extends out into the lake which the author mapped during the drought. Generally the sandbar is about 1.2m deep and rises slowly from the north to the south and then drops off to the channel depth as an underwater cliff. There are many stories of a secret channel through this sandbar and I am pleased to say they are true, except that it is a blind channel and does not exit to the north, but rises to the sandbar height and is blocked by a limestone cap. It occurs to the landward side of the first channel marker.

Again local knowledge is needed at Milang. Milang has a town jetty and to the south a large patch of reeds. However the water to the south and out into the lake from the reed bed is very shallow. This shallow water extends to the north and ‘seawards’ of the jetty but is now marked by a single red channel marker.

To the north of the marker, between the marker and the jetty and the jetty and the reed bed is enough water for any river vessel.

You can nose up into the reed bed, or anchor in the little bay between the reeds and the jetty or tie up to the jetty. The jetty, however, is not boat friendly and it would be prudent to place a stern anchor to moor just off the jetty. The end of the jetty is deep, but it quickly becomes very shallow. There used to be a large amount of underwater debris from the old jetty that extended further out into the lake, but this was all removed during the drought.

 

Boats waiting for the start to the Milang to Goolwa race January 2015.