Gibson Desert

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Gibson Desert

The Gibson Desert covers a large area in the state of Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a States and territories of Australia occupying the entire western third of the Australia . The nation's largest state and the second largest subnational entity in the world, it has 2.1 million inhabitants , 85% of whom live in the south-west corner of the state....
and is still largely in an almost "pristine" state. It is about 155,000 square kilometres (60,000 square miles) in size, making it the 5th largest desert in Australia, after the Great Sandy, Great Victoria, Tanami and Simpson deserts.

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The Gibson Desert covers a large area in the state of Western Australia

Western Australia

Lake Disappointment

Lake Disappointment is an ephemeral salt lake in a remote area of Western Australia.Lake Disappointment was named by the explorer Frank Hann in 1897....
and Lake Macdonald along the Tropic of Capricorn. The Gibson bioregion includes extensive areas of undulating sand plains and dunefields, low rocky/gravelly ridges and substantial upland portions with a high degree of laterite

Laterite

Laterite is a surface formation in hot and wet tropical areas which is enriched in iron and aluminium and develops by intensive and long lasting weathering of the underlying parent rock....
formation. Several isolated salt-water lakes occur in the centre of the region and to the southwest a system of small lakes follow paleo-drainage features. Groundwater sources include portions of the Officer Basin and Canning Basin. Large portions of the desert are characterized by gravel-covered terrains, as noted by early Australian explorers such as Giles (discussed below). Geographically, the Gibson Desert area forms part of the plateau of central Western Australia.

The desert was named after Alfred Gibson

Alfred Gibson

Alfred Gibson was an Australian exploration who perished in an 1874 expedition organised by Ernest Giles that sought to cross the deserts of Western Australia from east to west....
. Gibson perished while looking for water while attempting to cross it in 1874, on an exploratory expedition with Ernest Giles

Ernest Giles

William Ernest Powell Giles , best known as Ernest Giles, was an Australian List of explorers who led three major expeditions in central Australia....
. Giles, who successfully crossed the region in 1876, only narrowly avoided a similar fate, subsisting for weeks on dried horse meat and extremely limited water supplies.

In much of the region, especially the drier western portion, the only human inhabitants of the area are Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the first human inhabitants of the Australian continent and its nearby islands and their descendants. Indigenous Australians are distinguished as either Australian Aborigines or Torres Strait Islanders, who currently together make up about 2.6% of Australia's population....
, many of whom have had very limited contact with the outside world. In 1984, due to a severe drought

Drought

A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation ....
which had dried up all of the springs and depleted the bush foods, a group of the Pintupi

Pintupi

Pintupi refers to an Australian Aboriginal group who are part of the Western Desert cultural group and whose homeland is in the area west of Lake MacDonald and Lake Mackay in Western Australia....
people who were living a traditional semi-nomadic desert-dwelling life, walked out of a remote wilderness

Wilderness

Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet - those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with roads, pipelines or other industrial i...
in the central-eastern portion of the Gibson Desert (northeast of Waberton) and made contact for the first time with European-Australian society. They are believed to have been perhaps the last uncontacted tribe in Australia . On the eastern margin of the region, population centers (which include people of European descent) include Waberton, Mantamaru and Warakurma.

Climate

Rainfall in the Gibson Desert ranges from 200 mm (7.8 in) to 250 mm (9.8 in) annually, while evaporation rates are in the 3600 mm/yr range. The climate is generally hot; summer maximum temperatures rise above 40°C (104°F) whilst in winter the maximum may fall to 18°C (64°F) and minimum winter temperatures dip to 6°C (45°F)..

Environment and wildlife

Due to the lack of large scale farming or industry in the area, the environment is relatively unchanged from its natural state. Wildlife includes red kangaroo

Red Kangaroo

The Red Kangaroo is the largest of all kangaroos, the largest mammal native to Australia, and the largest surviving marsupial. It is found across mainland Australia, avoiding only the more fertile areas in the south, the east coast, and the northern rainforests....
, emu

Emu

The Emu , Dromaius novaehollandiae, is the largest bird native to Australia and the only Extant taxon member of the genus Dromaius. It is also the second-largest extant bird in the world by height, after its ratite relative, the ostrich....
, the greater bilby (a small, nocturnal rabbit-like herbiferous mammal), the hardy bush stone curlew, whose eerie cries echo over the desert in the night, and reptiles such as the thorny devil and perentie

Perentie

The Perentie is the largest monitor lizard or goanna native to Australia, and fourth largest lizard on earth, after the Komodo Dragon, Varanus salvadorii and the water monitor....
((Varanus giganteus) - the largest monitor lizard or goanna native to Australia, and fourth largest lizard on earth, after the Komodo Dragon). Feral animals include the camel

Camel

Camels are even-toed ungulates within the genus Camelus. The dromedary, one-humped or Arabian camel has a single hump and is well known for its healthy low fat milk, and the Bactrian camel has two humps....
. Pastoral leases

List of Pastoral leases in Western Australia

Pastoral leases are increasingly known as 'stations', and more particular - as either sheep stations or cattle stations. They are usually found in country that is designated as rangeland....
lie on the edge of the desert, and in some areas escaped grazing animals such as sheep compete with the local fauna for sparse resources.

Leisure and tourism

The Gibson Desert Nature Reserve is popular for visitors with four wheel driver vehicles (which can cause severe habitat damage if used irresponsibly) and is accessible from the famous Gunbarrel Highway

Gunbarrel Highway

The Gunbarrel Highway is an isolated desert track in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia, and it consists of 1400km of washaways, heavy corrugations, stone, sand and flood plains....
.

Geography

The Gibson Desert is located on the central Western Australian plateau, south of the Great Sandy Desert

Great Sandy Desert

The Great Sandy Desert is a 360,000 km? expanse in northwestern Australia. It forms part of a larger desert area known as the Western Desert ....
, east of the Little Sandy Desert

Little Sandy Desert

The Little Sandy Desert is a desert located in Western Australia south of the Great Sandy Desert and west of the Gibson Desert. It is thus named because it is relatively close and similar to the Great Sandy Desert, but is much smaller....
, and north of the Great Victoria Desert

Great Victoria Desert

The Great Victoria Desert is a barren, arid, and sparsely populated desert ecoregion in southern Australia. It falls inside the states of South Australia and Western Australia and consists of many small sandhills, grasslands and salt lake s....
. The altitude rises to just above 500 meters in places.

Biogeography

It is one of Western Australia's Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia

Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia

The Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia is a biogeography regionalisation of Australia developed by the Australian Government's Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts ....
(IBRA) regions, and an ecoregion

Ecoregions in Australia

Ecoregions in Australia are geographically distinct plant and animal communities, defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature based on geology, soils, climate, and predominant vegetation....
of the World Wildlife Fund.

External links

; a photo album of the Gibson Desert by Stuart Jackson, Verified 2006-01-23

Gibson Desert

Climate

Environment and wildlife

Leisure and tourism

Geography

Biogeography

Further reading

External links

See also