Sea Lake

Sea Lake, town, Mallee district, northwest Victoria, Australia, located about 6 miles (10 km) south of Lake Tyrrell (a salt-encrusted depression).

The first person of European descent to encounter the area around present-day Sea Lake is believed to have been William Edward Stanbridge, who arrived there in 1847. Stanbridge claimed the land to the east of Lake Tyrrell as station (ranch) country, naming it Astley’s after the village of his birth near Coventry, England. He later renamed it Tyrrell Downs. The origin of the name Sea Lake itself is less certain. Following the surveying of this portion of the Mallee district in the late 1880s, heavy rainfall and the natural flow of the Dunmunkel Creek produced a freshwater lake in the area near the eastern edge of the present-day town. The settlers who camped around this lake successfully petitioned the railroad to relocate a terminal earmarked for Lake Tyrrell to a site near this freshwater lake. It is believed that the map that accompanied this petition included the misspelled notation “sea lake” rather than “see lake” and that, with no other significant indication on the map or petition, this name stuck.

Located on the Calder Highway and a rail line running southeast to Melbourne (195 miles [314 km] southeast), the town serves a region of grain cultivation and sheep grazing. An extraction plant harvests the salt deposits of Lake Tyrrell. Pop. (2006) locality, 634; (2011) gazetted locality, 615.