Where is the Victoria Desert? Desert Victoria: description, photo

Australia is not for nothing called the driest continent of the earth. About forty percent of its territory is occupied by deserts. And the biggest of them is called: Victoria. This desert is located in the southern and western parts of the continent. Clearly isolating its boundaries and thereby determine the area is difficult. After all, from the north to it adjoins another desert - Gibson.

What caused such dryness in Australia? The proximity of Antarctica, the monsoon climate of Asia and the specifics of the Pacific Ocean contribute to the fact that little rain falls over the southwestern part of the continent. But that's not all. On the territory of the Victoria desert there are no springs, no rivers. This circumstance makes it the harshest habitat for man. But people still live there. And not only brave researchers. About the amazing and mysterious world of the Victoria Desert, read this article.

The arid continent

Just think: slightly less than half of Australia - solid deserts. And the other regions are also very arid. The lack of heavenly moisture does not experience only the extreme north of the continent, located in the equatorial climatic zone, and the east, where the mountains rise. Surprisingly, most deserts are located in the subtropics. These especially arid regions are divided into types. Distinguish foothill, clayey, sandy, stony deserts and plains. What is Victoria's type? This desert is sandy-saline. It is surrounded by large lakes. But the salinity in them is the same as water on Mars. Nevertheless, scientists have found living organisms, bacteria in the gypsum water of these lakes. Sand deserts are the most common. They occupy thirty-two percent of the continent's area.

Great Victoria Desert

It would seem that the interesting and poetic can be in the withered winds, carrying salt from the lakes, and in the sunbaked earth? But tourists who have visited there bring such wonderful photos that it seems as if they were traveling on another planet, not just one. Southeast and northwestern winds sand the ideal parallel tails, coloring these bands in purple, ashy, gold, purple and brown.

Despite the fact that there is no source here, the Victoria desert (the photo shows it) does not look uninhabited. Here live, albeit in small numbers, such tribes of aborigines of Australia as kogara and mirning. There is also a small town - Coober Pedy. About it we'll talk a little later, but for now only point out that its name translates as "White Men Under the Earth". The desert also has its own natural park. In Mamungari you can observe rare reptiles, animals, birds.

Where is the Victoria Desert

A huge natural landscape covering an area of 424,400 square kilometers stretches across two states: Western and South Australia. From the north to Victoria adjoins another desert - Gibson. From the south it is delineated by the arid plain of Nullarbor. From the east to the west the Victoria desert stretched for more than seven hundred kilometers. And its extent from north to south reaches 500 km. One can only imagine the courage of the English explorer Ernest Giles, who in 1875 first crossed these sands. He called the largest continent desert the name of the then ruling queen of Great Britain. The rains fall here annually from 200 to 250 millimeters. Snow is not fixed throughout the meteorological observations. The oral traditions of the Aborigines also do not convey any information about precipitation in the solid form above the desert. However, storms often erupt over Victoria. They happen fifteen or even twenty times a year. In summer the temperature reaches +40 degrees Celsius. It is not cold in the winter months. In June-August, the thermometer shows from eighteen to twenty-three degrees with a "plus" mark.

Natural landscapes

It is commonly believed that the sandy desert is endless barkhans. But this is not Victoria. This desert is a thicket of unpretentious acacias and prickly drought-resistant plants of spiniface. In lowlands, where groundwater is close to the surface, even eucalyptus grows. When a rare rain falls, the desert is transformed. From nowhere appear flowers, green grass, which against the background of red sand looks fantastic. Therefore Victoria is a fully protected area in the state of Western Australia. And in the south there is a biosphere reserve Mamungari.

Flora and fauna

Continent Australia itself is very isolated from other continents. Because of this, its flora and fauna is unique. Even more isolated from other natural landscapes of Australia Victoria. The desert is inhabited by endemic species, which are found only here and nowhere else. From the plant world, you can recall the kangaroo grass, soleros, kohiyu, saltwort.

The fauna of the desert does not shine with species diversity. The most common species in the Victoria desert is a kangaroo rat. With a large marsupial animal (the symbol of Australia), this jerboa has nothing in common except a similar structure of muscular hind legs. From mammals in the desert, there is a dingo dog and a bandicoot - a rabbit resembling a marsupial animal. In the reserve there are wavy parrots and emus ostriches. Nine of the top 10 most poisonous snake species live in Australia. The most dangerous is considered an aspid taipan. This brown snake with red eyes also has an extremely aggressive temperament, attacking even when it is not threatened. Lethal outcome is provided in a hundred percent of cases: in small animals instantaneously, in humans - after five hours. But the menacing lizard , with its thorns, is not dangerous at all.

Population

The Victoria Desert is not deserted. It is inhabited by groups of Aborigines who belong to the ethnographic type to the Mirling and Kogara tribes. They belong to the Australoid race. But, nevertheless, among them people with natural light hair often come across. Such blondes are not the fruit of mixed marriages with Anglo-Saxons or Scandinavians. This is a mutation that arose in antiquity, which was fixed in isolated communities from other desert communities.

The aborigines of Australia in the early twentieth century were on the verge of extinction. But now their numbers have increased to five hundred thousand people thanks to the changed policy of the government. Aborigines of the desert practice traditional kinds of hunting and gathering.

Underground city of Coober Pedy

The Victoria Desert in Australia is considered the capital of opals. Here are concentrated about thirty percent of all world reserves of this stone. Developed miner pits were occupied by ... dwellings. After all, under the ground year-round is a very comfortable temperature of 22 degrees. So gradually on the site of the mines appeared underground city, which astonished aborigines called Kuber-Pedy. The first trees the inhabitants made of iron. The rooms they either plastered or covered with PVA glue - then the beautiful texture of the stone was visible. The films "Black Hole", "Adventures of Priscilla", "Mad Max 3" and others were shot in Coober Pedy. It is interesting that in the arid desert of Victoria there are caves filled with water. Malamulang and Cockbiddy are the centers of diving enthusiasts. And in the cave of Kunulda you can see rock carvings of ancient Aborigines.