Sturt Stony Desert | |
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Sturt's Stony, Stony | |
Geography | |
Country | Australia |
State | South Australia, Queensland |
Coordinates | 27°S140°E / 27°S 140°E |
Sturt Stony Desert (previously Sturt's Stony Desert) is an area in the north-east of South Australia, far south western border area of Queensland and the far west of New South Wales.
It was named by Charles Sturt in 1844, while he was trying to find the inland sea which he believed lay at the centre of Australia. [1] The stones caused his horses to limp and wore down the hooves of the cattle and sheep which Sturt had taken on the expedition.
The larger Simpson Desert is located to the west and the Strzelecki Desert is to the south east. Between these two dunefields is the Gason Dome, upon which the Sturt Stony Desert is located. [2] To the south west of Sturt Stony Desert is the Tirari Desert. The Birdsville Track is a route between Marree in South Australia and Birdsville in Queensland.
Much of the desert is covered by gibber. Sturt suggested the closely compacted stones were the result of currents moving across an ancient seafloor. However the gibber plains originated from desert sandstone sheets which once covered the area. [3] Weather has slowly broken down the sandstone with the harder fragments remaining.
Both circular and stepped gilgai have been found in the desert. [4]
The desert is part of the Tirari-Sturt stony desert ecoregion. [5] It is home to the Kowari, a small but feisty carnivorous marsupial which hunts nocturnally on the vast gibber plains. [6] One of the kowari's main prey is the Long-haired Rat, a native rodent whose population occasionally booms to extraordinary numbers. During the booms thousands of rats can sing from their burrows, creating a hum which rises through the earth and fills the desert night. [7] Because of this, they are sometimes called the Singing Rat. [7] Booming rat populations provide bountiful food for kowaris, inland taipan, dingoes and the rare Letter-winged Kite. [7] [8]
The Great Victoria Desert is a sparsely populated desert ecoregion and interim Australian bioregion in Western Australia and South Australia.
The Simpson Desert is a large area of dry, red sandy plain and dunes in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland in central Australia. It is the fourth-largest Australian desert, with an area of 176,500 km2 (68,100 sq mi).
The Birdsville Track is a notable outback road in Australia. The 517-kilometre (321 mi) track runs between Birdsville in south-western Queensland and Marree, a small town in the north-eastern part of South Australia. It traverses three deserts along the route, the Strzelecki Desert, Sturt Stony Desert and Tirari Desert.
The Sturt National Park is a protected national park that is located in the arid far north-western corner of New South Wales, in eastern Australia. The 325,329-hectare (803,910-acre) national park is situated approximately 1,060 kilometres (660 mi) northwest of Sydney and the nearest town is Tibooburra, 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) away.
Astrebla Downs is a national park in Shire of Diamantina, Queensland, Australia.
Birdsville is a rural town and locality in the Shire of Diamantina, Queensland, Australia. It is situated 10 kilometres (6 mi) north of the border of South Australia and Queensland. In the 2021 census, the locality of Birdsville had a population of 110 people. It is a popular tourist destination with many people using it as a starting point across the Simpson Desert.
The Lake Eyre basin is a drainage basin that covers just under one-sixth of all Australia. It is the largest endorheic basin in Australia and amongst the largest in the world, covering about 1,200,000 square kilometres (463,323 sq mi), including much of inland Queensland, large portions of South Australia and the Northern Territory, and a part of western New South Wales. The basin is also one of the largest, least-developed arid zone basins with a high degree of variability anywhere. It supports only about 60,000 people and has no major irrigation, diversions or flood-plain developments. Low density grazing that sustains a large amount of wildlife is the major land use, occupying 82% of the total land within the basin. The Lake Eyre basin of precipitation to a great extent geographically overlaps the Great Artesian Basin underneath.
The Cooper Creek is a river in the Australian states of Queensland and South Australia. It was the site of the death of the explorers Burke and Wills in 1861. It is sometimes known as the Barcoo River from one of its tributaries and is one of three major Queensland river systems that flow into the Lake Eyre basin. The flow of the creek depends on monsoonal rains falling months earlier and many hundreds of kilometres away in eastern Queensland. It is 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) in length.
The kowari, also known by its Diyari name kariri, is a small carnivorous marsupial native to the gibber deserts of central Australia. It is the sole member of the genus Dasyuroides.
A desert pavement, also called reg, serir, gibber, or saï is a desert surface covered with closely packed, interlocking angular or rounded rock fragments of pebble and cobble size. They typically top alluvial fans. Desert varnish collects on the exposed surface rocks over time.
The Strzelecki Desert is located in the Far North Region of South Australia, South West Queensland and western New South Wales. It is positioned in the northeast of the Lake Eyre Basin, and north of the Flinders Ranges. Two other deserts occupy the Lake Eyre Basin—the Tirari Desert and the Simpson Desert.
The deserts of Australia or the Australian deserts cover about 2,700,000 km2 (1,000,000 sq mi), or 18% of the Australian mainland, but about 35% of the Australian continent receives so little rain, it is practically desert. Collectively known as the Great Australian desert, they are primarily distributed throughout the Western Plateau and interior lowlands of the country, covering areas from South West Queensland, Far West region of New South Wales, Sunraysia in Victoria and Spencer Gulf in South Australia to the Barkly Tableland in Northern Territory and the Kimberley region in Western Australia.
Mungeranie or Mungerannie, comprising Mungerannie Hotel and Mungerannie Station, a homestead on the Birdsville Track in northeastern South Australia. Located 204 kilometres (127 mi) north of Marree, South Australia and 313 kilometres (194 mi) south of Birdsville, Queensland the hotel is the only fuel and supplies depot on the Birdsville Track. The name "Mungeranie" is Aboriginal for "big ugly face".
The long-haired rat, is a species of rodent in the family Muridae which is native to Australia. The long-haired rat is well known for its population irruptions over vast areas of Australia which is the basis of its alternative common name, the plague rat. Most of the research on the long-haired rat has been conducted during times of massive population fluctuations and therefore little is known about their biology in a non-eruptive period.
The crest-tailed mulgara, is a small to medium-sized Australian carnivorous marsupial and a member of the family Dasyuridae which includes quolls, dunnarts, the numbat, Tasmanian devil and extinct thylacine. The crest-tailed mulgara is among a group of native predatory mammals or mesopredators endemic to arid Australia.
The Tirari Desert is a 15,250 square kilometres (5,888 sq mi) desert in the eastern part of the Far North region of South Australia. It stretches 212 km from north to south and 153 km from east to west.
The Mulga Lands are an interim Australian bioregion of eastern Australia consisting of dry sandy plains with low mulga woodlands and shrublands that are dominated by Acacia aneura (mulga). The Eastern Australia mulga shrublands ecoregion is coterminous with the Mulga Lands bioregion.
The Tirari–Sturt stony desert is a deserts and xeric shrublands ecoregion in central Australia.
Flinders Lofty Block is an interim Australian bioregion located in South Australia. It has an area of 6,615,765 hectares, which includes the Mount Lofty Ranges and Flinders Ranges.