Australian
deserts can be very dry and cover huge areas.
Australia is a very dry country. Despite the fact that its eastern
coast and northern tropics are frequently flooded in rains, 70% of the
country are deserts or semideserts.
There are ten larger deserts in
Australia, in inland Western Australia and Northern Territory, northern
South Australia, and south-western Queensland.
Simpson Desert. Poster by AllPosters. Click on thumbnail
to buy
The North-western Deserts
In the inland Northern Territory and Western Australia, there are
Tanami Desert, Great Sandy Desert, Gibson Desert and Little Sandy
Desert. Tanami Desert
in the
inland Northern Territory is famous for
the Tanami Track that goes from Alice
Springs to Kimberleys.
It is also an important refuge for some endangered animals like
mulgara, mala and bilby. The Great
Sandy Desert is a large desert in
northern WA, just south of the Kimberley region. Great Sandy actually
gets a fair bit of rain, however the high evaporation rate means it's
still a very dry place. Its vegetation is dominated by Spinifex
grasslands and the animals include kangaroos,
dingoes,
feral camels, bilbies, and reptiles like thorny devils, bearded dragons
and goannas. South of the GSD is Little
Sandy Desert - a smaller desert
with a very similar flora and fauna to the GSD. Gibson Desert is a
large desert east of LSD and south of GSD. There is no large scale
farming in the area, so Gibson's flora and fauna are fairly
pristine and include some quite rare animals like komodo dragon and
perentie (large monitor lizards); as well as thorny devils, kangaroos, emus,
bilbies and camels.
Great Sandy. Poster by AllPosters. Click on thumbnail to
buy
The Central Deserts
The other six deserts lie in the central areas of Australia. The
largest of them is the Great
Victoria
Desert, which covers huge areas
of extensive sand hills, spinifex grasslands, and open eucalypt
woodlands in South Australia and Western
Australia. East of the Great Victoria Desert in north-eastern South
Australia are Strzelecki, Sturt Stony,
Tirari, Pedirka and Simpson Deserts.
Poster by AllPosters. Click on thumbnail to buy
Simpson is
the largest and most
amazing one, consisting of the
world's longest parallel sand dunes (e.g. Big Red). There are also
Spinifex grasslands, shrublands, coolibah trees and many desert
wildflowers. Some animals
include the water holding frog, mulgara, skinks and spinifex hopping
mouse. West of the Simpson Desert is Pedirka, east of it is Strzelecki,
and south of it is Tirari Desert with the dry and salty Lake Eyre.
Poster by AllPosters. Click on thumbnail to buy
Here
is an Australian outback map showing the
Australian
deserts mentioned on this page.
Note:
This site uses
British English, which is the English we use in Australia. You will
find words like "traveller", "harbour" and "realise", and they are all
correct in the language used in Australia.
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