Big Desert Wilderness Park Victoria | |
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Coordinates | 35°39′30″S141°07′57″E / 35.6582°S 141.1326°E |
Established | 26 April 1979 [1] |
Area | 1,417.49 km2 (547.3 sq mi) [1] |
Managing authorities | Parks Victoria |
See also | Protected areas of Victoria |
The Big Desert Wilderness Park is a protected area in the Australian state of Victoria, Australia located in the state's west adjoining the border with South Australia. It is the oldest of Victoria's three wilderness parks.
The wilderness park consists of an area of 1,417.49 square kilometres (547 sq mi), [1] with no vehicular access, and no defined walking tracks. It includes part of the Big Desert and also adjoins Ninety Mile Desert across the border in South Australia. As it is a dedicated wilderness area, there are no facilities of any kind, including toilets or campsites. However, hiking and small fuel stoves are permitted. The wilderness park is overlapped by the Wyperfeld, Big Desert and Ngarkat Important Bird Area which identified as such by BirdLife International because of its importance for the conservation of malleefowl and other species of mallee birds. [2]
A large bushfire was ignited by lightning in the park in 2002 then spread rapidly due to strong winds and dry fuel. The fire soon joined another in the adjoining Wyperfield National Park and an area of 1,814 square kilometres (700 sq mi) was burned out. The fire burned for two weeks resulting in the loss of an abandoned house and 400 hectares (988 acres) of private property. [3]
The Croajingolong National Park is a coastal national park located in the East Gippsland region of the Australian state of Victoria. The 88,355-hectare (218,330-acre) national park is situated approximately 450 kilometres (280 mi) east of Melbourne and 500 kilometres (310 mi) south of Sydney.
The Murray-Sunset National Park is the second largest national park in Victoria, Australia, located in the Mallee district in the northwestern corner of the state, bordering South Australia. The 633,000-hectare (1,560,000-acre) national park is situated approximately 440 kilometres (270 mi) northwest of Melbourne and was proclaimed in 1991. It is in the northwestern corner of the state, bordering South Australia to the west and the Murray River to the north. The Sturt Highway passes through the northern part of the park, but most of the park is in the remote area between the Sturt Highway and the Mallee Highway, west of the Calder Highway.
The Wyperfeld National Park is the third-largest national park in Victoria, Australia, located in the Mallee district, approximately 450 kilometres (280 mi) north-west of Melbourne. The national park was declared in 1921 and has been expanded significantly since, to protect 357,017 hectares of mallee, woodland, and heathland. Along with the Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, Murray-Sunset National Park, Lake Albacutya Park and Murray-Kulkyne Park, Wyperfeld National Park is managed as part of the Victorian Mallee Parks.
Wilsons Promontory, is a peninsula that forms the southernmost part of the Australian mainland, located in the state of Victoria.
Fire-stick farming, also known as cultural burning and cool burning, is the practice of Aboriginal Australians regularly using fire to burn vegetation, which has been practised for thousands of years. There are a number of purposes for doing this special type of controlled burning, including to facilitate hunting, to change the composition of plant and animal species in an area, weed control, hazard reduction, and increase of biodiversity.
Ngarkat Conservation Park is a protected area located in South Australia's south-eastern corner about 200 kilometres south east of the Adelaide city centre.
The mallee emu-wren is a species of bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It is endemic to Australia.
The 2007 Kangaroo Island bushfires were a series of bushfires caused by lightning strikes on 6 December 2007 on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, resulting in the destruction of 95,000 hectares of national park and wilderness protection area. The fires occurred mainly across the western side of the island near Flinders Chase National Park, Vivonne Bay, D'Estrees Bay, Western River and Riverleas.
The Shire of Walpeup was a local government area in northwestern Victoria, Australia, along the South Australian border. The shire covered an area of 10,964 square kilometres (4,233.2 sq mi), and existed from 1911 until 1995.
The Corner Inlet is a 600-square-kilometre (230 sq mi) bay located 200 kilometres (120 mi) south-east of Melbourne in the South Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia. Of Victoria's large bays it is both the easternmost and the warmest. It contains intertidal mudflats, mangroves, salt marsh and seagrass meadows, sheltered from the surf of Bass Strait by a complex of 40 sandy barrier islands, the largest of which are Snake, Sunday and Saint Margaret Islands.
Bushfires in Australia are a widespread and regular occurrence that have contributed significantly to shaping the nature of the continent over millions of years. Eastern Australia is one of the most fire-prone regions of the world, and its predominant eucalyptus forests have evolved to thrive on the phenomenon of bushfire. However, the fires can cause significant property damage and loss of both human and animal life. Bushfires have killed approximately 800 people in Australia since 1851, and billions of animals.
The Bundara River, a perennial river of the North-East Murray catchment of the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the East Gippsland and Alpine regions of Victoria, Australia.
The Nadgee to Mallacoota Inlet Important Bird Area comprises some 385 square kilometres (149 sq mi) of coastal and subcoastal land at the south-eastern corner of the Australian continent, where Cape Howe marks the junction between the Tasman Sea and Bass Strait, as well as the eastern end of the state border between New South Wales and Victoria. It includes the whole of the 207 square kilometres (80 sq mi) Nadgee Nature Reserve in New South Wales with the adjoining 167 square kilometres (64 sq mi) eastern section of the Croajingolong National Park in East Gippsland, Victoria. The western border of the site is formed by Mallacoota Inlet.
The Wyperfeld, Big Desert and Ngarkat Important Bird Area comprises a 9743 km2 tract of semiarid mallee woodlands and shrublands in south-eastern Australia, straddling the border between the states of South Australia and Victoria.
Bushfires were mostly active between September 2011 to March 2012 and caused most damage in the state of Western Australia, particularly in the South West. The state had been prepared and had expected an increased risk of bushfire following heavy spring rains as a result of a La Nina weather pattern.
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Scorpion Springs Conservation Park was a protected area in the Australian state of South Australia located in the state’s south-east in the locality of Pinnaroo at the border with the state of Victoria about 215 kilometres (134 mi) south-east of the state capital of Adelaide and about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) south of the town of Pinnaroo.
Big Desert is a locality in the Australian state of Victoria located in the state's west adjoining the border with South Australia within the local government areas of the Shire of Hindmarsh, the Rural City of Mildura and the Shire of West Wimmera. The principal land use is conservation with part of the locality being occupied by the following protected areas:
Ngarkat were an indigenous Australian people of South Australia.