Rosy by the roadside

If you're cruising the Western Highway between Melbourne and Adelaide, this roadside curiosity around the halfway mark might catch your fancy. Small and shallow, it's known simply as Pink Lake, its salmon tone caused by a bacterium called Salinibacter ruber. That organism's name might tip you off to a fact about pink lakes across Australia and the globe: They're hypersaline, meaning they're saltier than the ocean, often by multiple times.