Great Victoria Desert
The Great Victoria Desert is the largest of Australia's several named deserts. It covers a vast area of central and southern Australia, mostly across the states of Western Australia and South Australia. It is named after Queen Victoria, who reigned during the period when European explorers were first crossing the continent. The desert is sparsely populated and largely untouched, with strong Aboriginal communities and unique wildlife.
- Areaapprox. 348,000 km²Roughly the size of Germany
- CountryAustraliaWestern Australia and South Australia
- Rainfallapprox. 200 mm/yearVariable and unreliable
- Hottest tempapprox. 50 °CIn summer
- Aboriginal communitiesPitjantjatjara, Yalata, othersLiving traditionally for thousands of years
- Famous wildlifeDingoes, perentiesPlus thorny devils and red kangaroos
The Great Victoria compared to other Australian deserts
The Great Victoria is Australia's biggest single named desert, although the entire Australian Outback covers vastly more.
What is the Great Victoria Desert?
The Great Victoria covers a huge area of central southern Australia. The desert is mostly low rolling country with long parallel sand dunes, salt pans, gibber plains (areas covered in wind-polished stones) and small scrubby trees called mulga. There are no permanent rivers crossing it. The desert is bounded to the north by the Gibson Desert and to the south by the Nullarbor Plain, a treeless limestone region.
Why is it called Victoria?
The desert was named in 1875 by British explorer Ernest Giles, who became the first European to cross it. Giles named the desert after Queen Victoria, the British monarch who was on the throne at the time. Like many Australian places named in the colonial era, the Aboriginal peoples already had their own names for the land but these were ignored by European mapmakers. Today the desert's indigenous custodians, including the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Spinifex peoples, use both the English and their own names for different areas.
Aboriginal cultures
The Great Victoria Desert is the traditional homeland of several Aboriginal peoples, including the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Spinifex, Anangu and Pintupi. These peoples have lived in the desert for tens of thousands of years and have developed deep knowledge of the land. Several Aboriginal communities still live traditionally on their lands today, and large parts of the desert are now Aboriginal-owned land.
The Australian government carried out British nuclear weapons tests in the southern part of the Great Victoria at Maralinga and Emu Field between 1953 and 1963, often without informing or evacuating local Aboriginal peoples. Many were exposed to radiation. Maralinga has now been cleaned up and returned to its Aboriginal traditional owners, but the experience remains a deep wound.
Wildlife
The Great Victoria has surprisingly diverse wildlife. The perentie, the fourth-largest lizard in the world (up to 2.5 metres long), is common in the desert. Dingoes, red kangaroos, echidnas, spinifex hopping mice and marsupial moles all live here. The desert is also home to several species of small marsupial that are extinct or critically endangered everywhere else, including the bilby and the chuditch.
Deeper dive: Aboriginal land rights, Maralinga and unique desert species
Much of the Great Victoria Desert is now owned by Aboriginal communities under the Australian land rights legislation of the 1970s onwards. The Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in northern South Australia cover over 100,000 square km and are owned by the Anangu people. The Maralinga Tjarutja Lands further south are owned by the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Kokatha peoples and include the former nuclear test site. These ownership models combine traditional Aboriginal land relations with modern Australian land law, giving the communities significant control over how the land is used and how visitors are permitted to enter.
The Maralinga nuclear tests of 1953 to 1963 left a long shadow on the southern Great Victoria. The British Government, with Australian agreement, exploded seven atomic bombs at Maralinga (plus several at Emu Field nearby) during this period. Aboriginal people were often poorly informed about the tests, and several Aboriginal families were exposed to radiation while continuing their traditional desert lifestyle. A 1985 Royal Commission found that the test program had been "inadequate" in its safety measures for Aboriginal people. Compensation was paid and the area was cleaned up between 1996 and 2000. Maralinga was returned to its traditional owners in 2009, although some areas remain restricted.
The Great Victoria has become an unexpected refuge for several Australian marsupial species that are extinct elsewhere. The greater bilby (a long-eared rabbit-like marsupial), the chuditch (a small carnivorous marsupial sometimes called the western quoll), and the brushtail possum all have important populations in the desert. The remoteness of the area and the limited introduction of European pest species (cats and foxes especially have devastated Australian native wildlife since the 1800s) has helped these species survive. Aboriginal traditional fire management, in which small controlled burns create a patchwork of habitats of different ages, may also be helping. Modern conservation projects are increasingly working with Aboriginal ranger groups to combine traditional knowledge with modern science.
The country is Australia. For more on the wider region, see the Australian Outback.