The Tirari Desert is a
desert
A desert is a landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions create unique biomes and ecosystems. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the la ...
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. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...
. 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 liter). I ...
and large north–south running
sand dunes.
It is located partly within the
Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre National Park. It lies mainly to the east of
Lake Eyre North.
Cooper Creek 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 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'') 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 (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...
s following rains.
The interdune soil type
A soil type is a taxonomic unit in soil science. All soils that share a certain set of well-defined properties form a distinctive soil type. Soil type is a technical term of soil classification, the science that deals with the systematic categ ...
s 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 plain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high Discharge (hydrolog ...
s, 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''), 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'').
The intermittent watercourses and permanent waterholes associated with tributaries of Cooper Creek support woodland dominated by River Red Gum ('' Eucalyptus camaldulensis'') and Coolibah ('' Eucalyptus coolabah'').
As at 2008, the Tirari Desert is included in biogeographic regions (IBRA) SSD3: Dieri, part of the Simpson Strzelecki Dunefields (SSD) Region. The desert is also part of the Tirari-Sturt stony desert ecoregion
An ecoregion (ecological region) is an ecological and geographic area that exists on multiple different levels, defined by type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and c ...
.
Fossils
The desert includes the Lake Ngapakaldi to Lake Palankarinna Fossil Area, a area on the now-defunct Register of the National Estate with significant Tertiary period
The Tertiary ( ) is an obsolete Period (geology), geologic period spanning 66 million to 2.6 or 1.8 million years ago. The period began with the extinction of the non-bird, avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at t ...
vertebrate
Vertebrates () are animals with a vertebral column (backbone or spine), and a cranium, or skull. The vertebral column surrounds and protects the spinal cord, while the cranium protects the brain.
The vertebrates make up the subphylum Vertebra ...
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 Dieri 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 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 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, again followed the river upstream to the Queensland
Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...
border, retracing the route on the return journey and then headed south to the Kopperamanna mission. Subsequently, they followed the course of Cooper Creek 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."
See also
* Deserts of Australia
* Lake Eyre Basin
* List of deserts by area
References
External links
Map of Tirari Desert
Online Natural History of Tirari Desert
Tirari 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