An indication of the general landscape in the Gibson Desert

A four wheel drive in the Gibson Desert

The Gibson Desert covers about 155,001 square kilometres (60,000 square miles), lying between Lake Disappointment and Lake Macdonald along the Tropic of Capricorn, in Western Australia. Four-wheel drive, 4WD, or 4x4 ("four by four" is a four-wheeled Vehicle with a drivetrain that allows all four Wheels to Lake Disappointment is an ephemeral salt lake in a remote area of Western Australia. Lake MacDonald is a suburb of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. Western Australia is a state occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. The area contains sandhills separated by dry grassland, along with isolated hills and low ranges, and forms part of the plateau of central Western Australia. A sandhill is an ecological Community type found in many parts of the world

The desert was named after Alfred Gibson. Alfred Gibson (? - 1874 was an Australian explorer who perished in an 1874 expedition organised by Ernest Giles that sought to cross the Deserts Gibson perished while attempting to cross it in 1874, while on an expedition with Ernest Giles. Year 1874 ( MDCCCLXXIV) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common William Ernest Powell Giles ( 7 July 1835 – 13 November 1897) best known as Ernest Giles, was an Australian explorer Giles only narrowly avoided a similar fate.

The only human inhabitants of the area are Indigenous Australians. Indigenous Australians are descendants of the first known human inhabitants of the Australian continent and its nearby islands. Due to a severe drought in 1984, which had dried up all of the springs and depleted the bush foods, a group of the Pintupi people who were living a traditional semi-nomadic desert-dwelling life walked out of the remote wilderness of the Gibson Desert in Western Australia and made contact for the first time with European-Australian society. A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply 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 Nomadic people, (from the νομάδες nomádes, "those who let pasture herds" also known as nomads, are communities of people that Wilderness is generally defined as a Natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by Human activity Western Australia is a state occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. They are believed to be the last uncontacted tribe in Australia. Uncontacted peoples are peoples who either by choice or chance live or have lived without significant contact with the 'modern' civilizations of the world

Climate

Rainfall in the Gibson Desert ranges from 200 mm (7. Rain is Liquid precipitation. On Earth it is the condensation of atmospheric Water vapor into drops heavy enough to fall often making it to 8 in) to 250 mm (9. 8 in) annually. 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)^[1].

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, emu, the greater bilby, and reptiles such as the thorny devil and perentie. The Red Kangaroo ( Macropus rufus) is the largest of all Kangaroos the largest Mammal native to Australia, and the largest surviving The Emu ( Dromaius novaehollandiae, is the largest Bird native to Australia and the only extant member of the Genus Feral animals include the camel. Camels are Even-toed ungulates within the Genus Camelus. The Dromedary, one-humped or Arabian camel has a single hump and the Pastoral stations lie on the edge of the desert.

Leisure and tourism

The Gibson Desert Nature Reserve is popular for visitors with four wheel driver vehicles and is accessible from the famous Gunbarrel Highway. The Gunbarrel Highway is an isolated desert track in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia, and it consists of 1400km

Geography

The Gibson Desert is south of the Great Sandy Desert and north of the Great Victoria Desert. There is another desert called " Great Sandy Desert " in Oregon, US. The Great Victoria Desert is a barren arid and sparsely populated Desert Ecoregion in southern Australia. The altitude sometimes rises above 500 metres.

Biogeography

The IBRA regions, with Gibson Desert in red

It is one of Western Australia's Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) regions,^[2][3] and an ecoregion of the World Wildlife Fund. The Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia ( IBRA) is a biogeographic regionalisation of Australia developed by the Australian Government's Department Ecoregions in Australia are geographically distinct plant and animal communities defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature based on geology soils climate ^[4]

References

Further reading

• Thackway, R and I D Cresswell (1995) An interim biogeographic regionalisation for Australia : a framework for setting priorities in the National Reserves System Cooperative Program Version 4. 0 Canberra : Australian Nature Conservation Agency, Reserve Systems Unit, 1995. ISBN 0642213712

External links

• Gibson Desert 1997; a photo album of the Gibson Desert by Stuart Jackson, Verified 2006-01-23

See also

• List of deserts by area