Full Lake George attracts windsurfers for the first time in 25 years

Braidwood weather station had earlier indicated a summer easterly was on its way. Over the course of the morning though, things had changed enough to almost keep the whole group out of the water.

Mr Hunter had just spent several days windsurfing in prime conditions in Batemans Bay.

He didn't mind waiting for stronger Canberra winds to return, he said.

They'd been waiting 25 years for the water.

"With all the rain for the last two seasons, this is the first year we've had," Mr Hunter said.

"It's full to the brim as far as I've ever seen."

Lake George has been slowly swelling since drought-breaking rains of 2019 ended a long period of dry.

Now the fish, seabirds and thrill-seeking Canberrans have all returned to enjoy the latest wet weather window.

Mr Hunter, as well as several other "old dogs" now enjoying Lake George's renaissance, had raced on the lake when it was last this full in the '90s.

An informal gathering of mostly men in their 20s would drive down after work on a weekly basis and race a figure-eight track around the lake until sundown.

Despite the competition being dominated by wind sport champion, the late Dave Pitchford, a regular hoard showed up week after week, riding the wave of a windsurfing boom emerging from California in the '80s.

"Today, wing with a 'g' surfing is taking off," Mr Hunter said.

"Some of the old faces are changing over and there's a whole bunch of new guys trying it out."

Windsurfing's resurgence - a spike Mr Hunter puts down to COVID - has seen windfoiling, as well as wingfoiling emerge as the more popular offshoots.

Carbon foil was attached to boards to create windfoiling. The emergence of wings created wingfoiling.

Mr Hunter said there were around 30 "wingers" in Canberra now.

"The closest feeling is snowboarding in waist deep powder on a nice hill," he explained.

"It's effortless. There's no friction, there's no slap. It's just like being a bird."

Michael Moore likened the foil to an aircraft wing supported by an 85-centimetre mast at the centre of the board.

"To get on foil you use a style called 'pumping the wing' which is essentially flapping it in and out to generate a bit of extra power," he said.

"Once you're on foil, there's very little power required. You can move much like any boat: slightly up wind, slightly downwind, and tack, jibe like any normal sail craft."

Mr Moore said one of the main appeals was being able to head out in the ocean past the breakers, riding "an unbroken lump" as if you were surfing.

"It's like a flying surfboard," he said.

The group on the water this mid-December day began planning their return to Lake George in winter.

The mates - bonded over a love of niche water sports while living in an inland city - had made regular trips to the burgeoning Lake George ever since.

Neil Richards, one of the first to get his board out during the less than ideal conditions, said warmer weather typically brought in the 12-plus knot easterlies required to launch.

"Summer easterlies normally come to Canberra in the evening when there is a southerly or south-east wind at the coast," he said.

If it changed to easterly in Braidwood, it typically arrived at Lake George a few hours later and Canberra an hour after that, Mr Richards said.

While both wind foiling and windsurfing are possible and relatively popular on Lake Burley Griffin, the wind at Lake George is stronger and more consistent and its shear size meant it was possible to get a long run north towards Collector, Mr Richards said.

"We normally travel at 25-35km/h but the fastest of the Canberra foilers are doing upwards of 50km/h. 30km/h is verging on terrifying, you feel right on the edge of control," he said.

"Foiling is a bit like standing on a fit ball on the ocean, but when you get the hang of it the sensation of speed is extraordinary."

A far cry from the ocean's green and blue shades, Lake George on this particular December day was likened to the colour of concrete.

"It's a very shallow lake," Australian National University Emeritus Professor Brad Pillans explains. "And it's several kilometres across.

"With a lake that size and depth, the water gets affected by wind very easily and sediment gets stirred up.

"Unless it's a very calm day with a bright, blue sky, the lake always looks a bit ... a bit like Lake Burley Griffin actually."

Professor Pillans' fascination with Lake George began while waterskiing on it with his family as a boy in the '60s. He's now been studying its behaviour as part of a research group for almost a decade.

The experience of driving from Canberra, seeing that long stretch of flat extended out at the foot of surrounding hills, meant the intrigue remained, he said.

"That contrast in the topography and the scenery is always very striking and in the late afternoon when the shadows creep over it, it just has a really interesting feel about it," he said.

Professor Pillans said right now, Lake George's maximum depth was just over three metres, which is pretty similar to the level it reached briefly in 1990 and 1976.

"Before that you have to go back to the 1960s when the lake, in many older Canberrans' minds, was full," he said.

"The water levels were anything between three and four-and-a-half metres deep."

In the 1960s, when a yacht club and a speedboat club still existed on its shores, the water went right up to the edge of the Federal Highway.

"Of course, the highway has been built up since that level of the 1950s and '60s when occasionally the water would cut across the road," he said.

Professor Pillans said he'd like to think if this summer remained relatively cool and wet, by next winter when evaporation was low the current level could rise again.

"I'm kind of hoping that the lake will go higher," he said.

"I'd love to see a record broken."

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Lake George water-level observation records dating back to 1820 provide a comprehensive "rain gauge" of climatic conditions.

Beaches and shorelines around the lake go up to 30 metres above the present lake floor, indicating its size in prehistoric times.

"At those times the lake would have filled up almost to spilling over through Gearys Gap, which is the lowest part of Lake George basin at the present time.

"There's no outlet to the lake at the moment, the water from the creeks just flows into the lake and stays there.

"If it fills up higher than about 35 metres, then it would potentially spill out through Gearys Gap and into the headwaters of the Yass River."

Professor Pillans said analysing the sediment that goes down almost 170 metres below the lake floor could provide insight into climate and vegetation over the last three to four million years.

"The level of water in the lake is basically a balance between rainfall runoff from the streams that flow into the lake and evaporation," he said.

"It's basically an indicator of what's been happening throughout southeastern Australia - because Lake George is right in the middle of all that - and that's representative of the weather patterns and the climate changes that we're getting.

"Lake George has a very special record of what's been happening in this part of the world."

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