Gibson Desert

The Gibson Desert (English: Gibson Desert ) is an Australian desert in the state of Western Australia. Your size is 156.3 thousand km ². It is very remote and is very sparsely populated.

Discovery history

It was named the Gibson Desert of British explorer Ernest Giles in memory of Alfred Gibson, who went missing during an expedition that tried to cross the desert from 1873 to 1874. Giles and Gibson were two ridden ahead to explore the grounds. Here, Gibson died Horse and Giles sent him with his own horse back to camp to get help. As Giles walk and almost completely exhausted arrived eight days later there again, Gibson had not arrived. Despite several days of searching, he was no longer found.

Landscape

The landscape is dominated by sand plains, dune fields, low rocky ridge and lateritic highlands. Small salt lakes are situated in the center of the desert in the southwest, including the Lake Baker. In the Gibson Desert, there are two sedimentary basins, the Officer and Canningbecken. These are a part of the Great Artesian Basin.

Climate

The desert climate is characterized by very hot summers, where the average temperature in January can be 36 ° C. In winter, the lowest average temperature reaches 6 ° C, the daily temperature is 21 ° C. The annual rainfall is 150 mm to 200 mm. The majority of the rain falls during the 20 to 30 thunderstorms per year.

Fauna and Flora

On the lateritic highlands Mulga scrub and grassland spinifex grass grows ( Triodia goitre ). The red dune fields and sand plains overgrown with bushes such as acacia, Hakea and Grevilleen that collect over the spinifex grasslands ( Triodia pungens ). In the highlands in the north grow shrub steppes and southern mulga bushes. In the areas that have been affected by Schwemmlandgebiet from the Paleocene and Quaternary, where forests rise above the grasslands of different Coolibah tree species (species of eucalyptus ).

In addition to the Red Kangaroo emus live in the Gibson Desert. The original wildlife threaten cats and foxes. Rabbit and the numerous free-running camels endanger the desert plants in their inventory.

Infrastructure, population, Artist

The human low desert area is accessible through two main roads that are unpaved and impassable in the rainy season. In an east-west direction leads the Gary Highway from Alice Springs to Papunya and on to the Canning Stock Route. The Canning Stock Route traverses the Gibson Desert in Wiluna starting in a northeasterly direction.

In the 1950s, an Aboriginal mission station with the help of the government established by the Church, as in a Maralinga nuclear test site was built by the British and the local Aboriginal people were driven from the area in Wiluna. How to leave this desert area is, was known worldwide as the last nomadic clan of Aborigines, first came Pintupi Nine of the Gibson Desert in contact with the white population in October 1984.

In the desert area of the Pintupi Aborigines and Luritja live. The largest population is located in Warburton at the eastern end of the Gibson Desert. Another great place is Wiluna, but there are also other smaller Aboriginal settlements. In the vicinity of Warburton gold and silver mining activity, is at Wiluna a gold and uranium deposits, the latter is not yet in the degradation.

The Gibson Desert is a part of the cultural complex in the Western Desert. In the Gibson Desert known artists of the Aborigines, are associated with the art style of dot painting live.