Unit 9: Deserts.Three great stretches of sandy desert almost circle the centre of Australia.To the north of Nullabor Plain stretches the Great Victoria Desert.In the west, the Gibbon, Great Sandy, and Tanami Deserts comprise an enormous sandy area.North of Lake Eyre lies the Simpson Desert, the last part of Australia to be explored.The Simpson Desert lies between Lake Eyre in the south, the Macdonnel Ranges in the north, the Mulligan and the Diamantina Rivers in the east, and the Macumba and Finke Rivers in the west.The first European entered the Simpson Desert in 1845.But the desert remained a mystery until Madigan made an aerial survey in 1929.He named the desert after Simpson, President of the South Australian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia.In 1936, Colson and an Australian Aborigine took camels across the desert.They travelled along the border of South Australia and the Northern Territory.Three years later Madigan led a scientific expedition across the sand dunes on a more northerly route.Colson and Madigan both travelled eastward across the Simpson Desert.In the Simpson Desert there are different types of dunes.In the western part of the desert, there is a network of short dunes, mostly less than 10 metres high.Hummock grasses grow in loose sand on the crest and spinifex grows in the corridors between dunes and on the more stable slopes.In the northern part of the desert, the dunes are parallel and separated by corridors of low, open shrubland.Spinifex grows on the slopes of the dunes.These dunes are deep red-brown, but the sand is pale in the area where Queensland, South Australia and Northern Territory meet.Dry salt lakes up to 70 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide lie between long dunes with crests 20 metres high. TRANSLATESOK
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