The Tirari Desert is a

desert A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About on ...

in the eastern part of the Far North region of

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest o ...

. It stretches 212 km from north to south and 153 km from east to west.

Location and description

The Tirari Desert features

salt lakes A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per litre). ...

and large north–south running

sand dune A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, f ...

s. It is located partly within the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre National Park. It lies mainly to the east of

Lake Eyre Lake Eyre ( ), officially known as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, is an endorheic lake in east-central Far North South Australia, some north of Adelaide. The shallow lake is the depocentre of the vast endorheic Lake Eyre basin, and contains ...

North.

Cooper Creek The Cooper Creek (formerly Cooper's 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 ...

runs through the centre of the desert. The adjacent deserts of the area include Simpson Desert which lies to the north while the Strzelecki Desert is to the east and the

Sturt Stony Desert 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 ...

runs aligned with the Birdsville track to the north east. The desert experiences harsh conditions with high temperatures and very low rainfall (mean annual rainfall is below ).

Access and stations

The main vehicular access to the desert is via the unpaved Birdsville Track which runs northwards from Marree to Birdsville. The Mungerannie Hotel is the only location between the two towns that provides services. The Tirari Desert region has a number of large cattle stations which are stopping points on the Channel Country aviation mail run. Dulkaninna Station has been run by the same family for 110 years, has 2,000 cattle and breeds horses and kelpies.

Etadunna Station Etadunna is a pastoral lease in the Australian state of South Australia located in the gazetted locality of Etadunna, South Australia, Etadunna and which is operating as a cattle station. In about 1867, German Lutheran missionaries J.F. Goss ...

to the north is a cattle station with 2500 cattle. The station environs include a number of heritage sites include Bucaltaninna Homestead ruins, the Woolshed ruins and Canny Trig Point (also known as Milner's Pile) and the state heritage-registered Killalpaninna Mission site. Further north again is Mulka Station which also has a number of heritage sites including homestead ruins at Apatoongannie, Old Mulka and Ooroowillannie. The Mulka Store ruins is listed as a state heritage place on the South Australian Heritage Register.

Vegetation

The vegetation of the dunefields of the Tirari Desert is dominated by either Sandhill Wattle ('' Acacia ligulata'') or Sandhill Cane-grass (''

Zygochloa paradoxa ''Zygochloa'' is a genus of desert plants in the grass family known only from Australia. The only known species is ''Zygochloa paradoxa'', commonly known as sandhill canegrass. It occurs in extremely arid areas such as the Simpson Desert ...

'') which occur on the crests and slopes of dunes. Tall, open shrubland also occurs on the slopes. The otherwise sparsely vegetated dunefields become covered by a carpet of grasses, herbs and colourful

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants t ...

s following rains. The interdune soil types and hence the vegetation, varies with the dune spacing. Closer spaced dunes result in sandy valleys that have similar vegetation to the dune sides while widely spaced dunes are separated by gibber or flood plains, each supporting particular vegetation communities. The vegetation on the floodplains varies with the capacity of the land to retain floodwaters, and the frequency of inundation. In drier areas, species including Old Man Saltbush (''

Atriplex nummularia ''Atriplex nummularia'' is a species of saltbush from the family ''Amaranthaceae'' and is a large woody shrub known commonly as oldman saltbush. ''A. nummularia'' is native to Australia and occurs in each of the mainland states, thriving in ari ...

''), Cottonbush ('' Maireana aphylla'') and Queensland Bluebush ('' Chenopodium auricomum'') form a sparse, open shrubland, whereas swamps and depressions are frequently associated with Swamp Cane-grass ('' Eragrostis australasica'') and Lignum (''

Muehlenbeckia florulenta ''Duma florulenta'' (synonym ''Muehlenbeckia florulenta''), commonly known as tangled lignum or often simply lignum, is a plant native to inland Australia. It is associated with wetland habitats, especially those in arid and semiarid regions s ...

''). The intermittent watercourses and permanent waterholes associated with tributaries of

support woodland dominated by River Red Gum (''

Eucalyptus camaldulensis ''Eucalyptus camaldulensis'', commonly known as the river red gum, is a tree that is endemic to Australia. It has smooth white or cream-coloured bark, lance-shaped or curved adult leaves, flower buds in groups of seven or nine, white flowers an ...

'') and Coolibah (''

Eucalyptus coolabah ''Eucalyptus coolabah'', commonly known as coolibah or coolabah, is a species of tree found in eastern inland Australia. It has rough bark on part or all of the trunk, smooth powdery cream to pink bark above, lance-shaped to curved adult leaves, ...

''). As at 2008, the Tirari Desert is included in biogeographic regions (IBRA) SSD3:

Dieri The Diyari (), alternatively transcribed as Dieri (), is an Indigenous Australian group of the South Australian desert originating in and around the delta of Cooper Creek to the east of Lake Eyre. Language Diyari is classified as one of the ...

, part of the Simpson Strzelecki Dunefields (SSD) Region. The desert is also part of the Tirari-Sturt stony desert

ecoregion An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of ...

Fossils

The desert includes the

Lake Ngapakaldi to Lake Palankarinna Fossil Area __NOTOC__ The Lake Ngapakaldi to Lake Palankarinna Fossil Area is a group of fossil sites located in the Australian state of South Australia within the Tirari Desert in the north-eastern part of the state's Far North region. The group has an ...

, a area on the now-defunct

Register of the National Estate The Register of the National Estate was a heritage register that listed natural and cultural heritage places in Australia that was closed in 2007. Phasing out began in 2003, when the Australian National Heritage List and the Commonwealth Herita ...

with significant Tertiary period

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () ( chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with ...

fossils.

History

The area was first explored by Europeans in 1866 and was previously settled by a small tribe of Aboriginals, the Tirari.

Dieri people

The Tirari Desert has been part of the

people's native title claim. The Australian anthropologist Norman Tindale reported a small tribe now extinct which he referred to as the Tirari. They were located at the eastern shore of Lake Eyre from Muloorina north to Warburton River; east to Killalapaninna. Tindale disagreed with the earlier findings of

Alfred William Howitt Alfred William Howitt , (17 April 1830 – 7 March 1908), also known by author abbreviation A.W. Howitt, was an Australian anthropologist, explorer and naturalist. He was known for leading the Victorian Relief Expedition, which set out to es ...

that these people were a horde of the Dieri as the language spoken was different from Dieri. Since Tindale's work was published, much of the data relating to Aboriginal language group distribution and definition has undergone revision since 1974. Tindale's focus was to depict Aboriginal tribal distribution at the time of European contact.

Missions

In the 1860s two Aboriginal missions were established near the Cooper Creek crossing of the Birdsville Track. The Moravians established a short-lived mission at Lake Kopperamanna in 1866. This was closed in 1869 due to drought conditions and poor relations with the local indigenous community. Bethesda Mission was established by German Lutherans at nearby Lake Killalpaninna around the same period and, after also being abandoned for a short time, was re-established and by the 1880s it resembled a small town with more than 20 dwellings including a church. At this time, it had a population of "several hundred aborigines and a dozen whites". Primarily financed by sheep grazing, the mission closed in 1917 due to the effects of drought and rabbit plagues. Currently, there is little evidence of the settlement other than a small cemetery and some remnant timber posts. The mission remains are listed on the South Australian Heritage Register as the Killalpaninna Mission Site.

European exploration

On an 1866 expedition to determine the northern limit of Lake Eyre,

Peter Egerton Warburton Colonel Peter Egerton-Warburton (16 August 1813 – 5 November 1889), often referred to as Major Warburton, was a British military officer, Commissioner of Police for South Australia, and an Australian explorer. In 1872 he sealed his legacy th ...

approached the desert from the west and followed the upstream course of what is now known as the Warburton River, but which he incorrectly believed was Cooper Creek. In 1874 another expedition, led by

James William Lewis James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (disambiguat ...

, again followed the river upstream to the

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , establishe ...

border, retracing the route on the return journey and then headed south to the Kopperamanna mission. Subsequently, they followed the course of

to conduct a survey of the east shore of Lake Eyre. Lewis, in a later account of his expedition, said of the lake "I sincerely trust I may never see it again; it is useless in every respect, and the very sight of it creates thirst in man and beast."

References

External links

Map of Tirari DesertOnline Natural History of Tirari DesertTirari Desert SA @ ExplorOz
{{coord, 28, 22, S, 138, 07, E, type:landmark_region:AU-SA, display=title Deserts of South Australia Far North (South Australia) Lake Eyre basin IBRA subregions