The lake is surrounded by private farmland but is itself Crown land; part of its south eastern shore is classified as "Public Reserve".

Water levels in the lake are affected by its complex geology, including calcareous and quartz sands, granite hills and dune formations.

But in July 1921 the King Island News[8] published a letter from the government surveyor, KM Harrisson, expressing his concern that the Tasmanian Animals' and Birds' Protection Act 1919[9] would remove the previously gazetted sanctuary.

(CLAC Project Consultation Report and Recommendations, p. 9)The King Island Biodiversity Management Plan 2012–2022 identified Lake Flannigan as habitat for the Orange-bellied Parrot (Neophema chrysogaster), which uses the area each year as a stop-over en route to Victoria, from mid-March to June and again briefly in September when returning.

[12] It reveals that: "Until 1956 place names were applied by walking clubs and government bodies such as Mines Department, Hydro-Electric Commission and the Surveys Office.

[18] Although the Lands Department had no formal responsibility for naming places in Tasmania prior to 1956, several of the staff were keenly interested in nomenclature.

He returned to his family (his Irish mother, Margaret O'Halloran and her son from her second marriage, William Higgs) in Bendigo Victoria, and died there of tuberculosis in April 1901, aged 38.

The name Big Lake was transferred to a previously nameless lagoon on the edge of Colliers Swamp Conservation Area, in the southernmost locality of Surprise Bay, King Island.