A visit to Antony Gormley’s Inside Australia sculptures at Lake Ballard in the Goldfields

Imagine finding a remote lake in Western Australia where it looks like aliens have landed. Then discovering that the skinny sculptures that dot the barren lake’s landscape were inspired by 51 locals who posed nude.

This is Lake Ballard, 200km north of Kalgoorlie, where the ghosts of goldminers past still loom large. World-renowned British sculptor Antony Gormley created the 51 steel sculptures in 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Perth International Arts Festival. You can imagine the reaction of the fine country folk of the nearest town Menzies, as the genteel Gormley persuaded them politely to get their gear off.

They eventually reacted to Gormley warmly, allowing him to use a digital scanner across their naked bodies to make life-size moulds of the sculptures that look more like Aborigines on walkabout than larger-than-life locals.

Intrigued by the English interest in naked outback Australians, we drove 130km north from Kalgoorlie to Menzies — almost a ghost town now with just a run-down pub juxtaposed with a magnificent, historic town hall. Consider bringing your own lunch if you make the trip, because the small shop at the back of the pub had limited supplies.

Menzies local Jill Dwyer laughs when she recalls how she was the hotel manager when Gormley walked in with his eccentric naked request. “I said are you for real? This is Menzies for God’s sake. What the hell?” She and about half the locals agreed, but some had to be convinced by Gormley with a barbecue, beers and a bribe of $20. The publican wasn’t impressed because he’d already stripped for free, and had to provide all the $20 notes from the till.

Jill said that when the Englishman ventured out to the lake in the midday sun, his pale complexion was covered by only shorts, long socks and sandals. “ I thought, typical Pom. He came back so red that he took the top sheet off his hotel bed and went back to the lake looking like Lawrence of Arabia.”

The last 30km to Lake Ballard is on a dirt road that sets the scene for what you’re about to encounter. As the crunching sound of gravel stops in the carpark, the silence and solitude are almost overwhelming. In front of you, a vast white salt lake stretches out in every direction, punctuated by those 51 spaced out statues that embellish the isolation. As the sun moves across the sky, their shadows move and lengthen across the lake, creating an almost-eerie aura.

In the middle of the lake, a steep hill rises like an island that you can walk across the lake to; in winter, you would have to walk on water to reach the heights of the spiritual experience below. The vastness of the dry lake bed stretching out in front of you makes it clear why Lake Ballard has been described as the world’s largest outdoor art gallery. There’s a campground here on the edge of the lake that allows you to stay overnight for a stellar experience. The sculptures fade to black in front of you as night falls, replaced by a myriad of stars filling the sky above, brilliant because of the lack of city light.

The lake was named after Robert Ballard, who arrived in 1896 as the general manager of the local Menzies mine. The town warden at the time is reported to have described Ballard as: “a well-read classical scholar . . . extremely irritable and with a raucous voice, who kept a revolver by his side at all times, whether in the office or in bed. His brother, Johnnie, was the opposite in every way. Whenever Ballard called for Johnnie, if he did not appear promptly enough, off would go one of the revolvers aimed above door level. Johnnie would rush in holding his arms in a protective manner across his head exclaiming, ‘Yes brother! Yes brother!’ The hessian office walls were simply riddled with bullet holes.”

More than a hundred years later, Ballard may have blasted more bullets if he knew England was encouraging locals to go naked on his lake.