Lake Ginninderra is a lake in the Australian capital of Canberra . It was created in 1974 to catch excess rain in a catchment area of 98 km² during thunderstorms and to protect the Molonglo River from flooding. There are numerous districts of the Belconnen and Gungahlin districts around the lake . The lake is the habitat of numerous water birds such as black swans , pond claws and ducks .
The 1.05 km² large and up to 3.5 m deep lake was created by the construction of the Ginninderra Drive dam , which runs across the Ginninderra Creek . In 2004 the dam was raised by 1 m in order to be prepared for a flood, which theoretically can occur once every 1 million years. The sense of this construction project is controversial, because Ginninderra Drive is almost 8 m above lake level and even during the most violent thunderstorms since the lake was formed, it never rose by more than 30 cm.
