Location & Continent
Continent: Australia
Country: Australia
States: South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales
Approximate Coordinates: 28°30′S, 141°00′E
Sturt Stony Desert – Map & Street View
The Sturt Stony Desert lies in the remote heart of the Australian Outback, between the Simpson Desert to the west and the Strzelecki Desert to the east. Use the map and embedded view below to explore this vast stony wilderness.
Photos of the Sturt Stony Desert
From the air it looks like a rust-red mosaic; on the ground you see polished stones stretching to the horizon. You can showcase images like:
- Wide gibber plains under a huge, cloudless sky
- Low red dunes edging the stone fields
- Ephemeral claypans and salt-encrusted depressions after rare rain
- Tracks of kangaroos and small marsupials threading between stones
In WordPress you might use a gallery shortcode, for example:
Physical Features
Area: ~29,750 km² (a mid–sized Australian desert of stone rather than sand)
Elevation: Around 90–100 m above sea level on gently undulating plains
Landforms: Gibber plains (stony desert pavement), low sand dunes, salt and clay pans, shallow drainage depressions
Neighbouring Deserts: Simpson Desert (W), Strzelecki Desert (E), Tirari Desert (SW)
Quick Facts Table
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Biome | Deserts & xeric shrublands |
| Ecozone / Ecoregion | Tirari–Sturt stony desert of central Australia |
| Dominant Surface | Siliceous gibber (tightly packed stones) over clayey soil |
| Hydrology | Part of the broader Lake Eyre Basin with intermittent creeks and ephemeral lakes |
Climate & Precipitation
The Sturt Stony Desert lies within one of the driest regions in Australia. Nearby weather stations such as Moomba show a hot desert climate with highly variable rainfall.
Temperature:
- Summer days: often 35–40 °C, with heatwaves climbing into the mid-40s °C
- Winter days: usually 18–25 °C
- Nights: cool to cold in winter, sometimes close to 0 °C
Precipitation:
- Average annual rainfall near the desert: roughly 150–200 mm
- Rain days: barely two days per month on average, many months with no measurable rain
- Rainfall pattern: strongly variable; long dry spells broken by occasional heavy downpours from tropical systems
Seasonal Climate Overview
| Season | Typical Daytime | Typical Night | Conditions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Summer (Dec–Feb) | 35–40 °C, hotter in heatwaves | 20–25 °C | Extreme heat, intense sun, thunderstorms or monsoonal bursts possible |
| Autumn (Mar–May) | 25–33 °C | 12–20 °C | Gradual cooling, some late-season storms |
| Winter (Jun–Aug) | 18–25 °C | 0–10 °C | Cool, dry, often crystal-clear skies |
| Spring (Sep–Nov) | 28–35 °C | 15–22 °C | Rapid warming, dust storms and strong winds on exposed plains |
Ecological Features
The Sturt Stony Desert forms the stony core of the Tirari–Sturt stony desert ecoregion, a broad zone of:
- Gibber plains – almost bare stone pavements
- Red sand dunes and sandy swales
- Salt lakes and claypans that briefly hold water after rain
- Low mulga, mallee and chenopod shrublands on slightly better soils
Life here survives through extreme water efficiency, long dormancy and rapid response to episodic rainfall. After a good downpour the “dead” plains can turn green in a matter of days – a suprisingly fast transformation.
Flora & Fauna
Vegetation
At first glance the Sturt Stony Desert looks almost lifeless, but look more closely between the stones:
- Saltbush and bluebush (chenopods) forming low, grey-green cushions
- Mitchell grass and other tough tussock grasses in swales and around ephemeral creeks
- Mulga (Acacia aneura) and other acacias on rises and drainage lines
- Scattered mallee eucalypts and belah woodlands on the fringes of the stony plains
- Short-lived wildflowers that emerge after rare, soaking rains
Wildlife
The desert supports a suite of highly specialised animals that know how to use every stone, burrow and shadow:
- Kowari (Dasyuroides byrnei) – a small, fierce, nocturnal carnivorous marsupial that hunts on the gibber at night
- Long-haired rat – a native rodent whose occasional population booms feed predators across the region
- Letter-winged kite – a rare, nocturnal raptor that follows rat plagues
- Red kangaroo and western grey kangaroo on the better vegetated margins
- Wedge-tailed eagle circling on thermals above the plains
- Reptiles such as skinks, dragons and venomous snakes adapted to hot, open ground
- Invertebrates that stay dormant in soil or rock crevices until rain arrives
Many animals adopt nocturnal habits, emerging only after dark when stone temperatures finally drop and the desert falls quiet.
Geology & Notable Features
The defining feature of the Sturt Stony Desert is its gibber pavement – a tightly packed cover of stones that can look almost like a man-made surface.
- The gibber consists mainly of silcrete fragments, derived from the breakdown of a once-continuous siliceous caprock.
- Over millions of years, softer materials were stripped away by wind and occasional waterflows, leaving the harder fragments behind.
- Many stones are coated with dark desert varnish, a thin layer of iron and manganese oxides that gives them a polished, glossy look.
- Scattered flat-topped mesas and low sandstone hills stand above the plains, remnants of older surfaces.
- Shallow depressions and gilgai micro-relief trap runoff, creating small patches of finer soil and vegetation.
For geologists, this is a natural laboratory for understanding desert pavement formation, long-term erosion and the evolution of Australia’s arid interior.
Introduction to the Sturt Stony Desert
The Sturt Stony Desert is one of the most distinctive deserts on Earth – not because of towering dunes, but because of its near-endless carpet of stone. Walking across it, you hear the crunch of gibber underfoot and feel the heat radiating from every rock. It sits in the far interior of eastern Australia, at the meeting point of three states and three other great deserts.
Unlike the classic image of a “sea of sand”, this is a gibber desert. The stones once tormented the horses and cattle of 19th-century explorers. Today they fascinate scientists, photographers and desert travellers who are drawn to landscapes that look almost Martian.
Where in Australia Is the Sturt Stony Desert?
This desert lies within the Lake Eyre Basin of central-eastern Australia, a huge internal drainage basin that channels rare floods toward Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre. The Sturt Stony Desert:
- Occupies the north-east of South Australia
- Extends into the far south-west of Queensland
- Touches the far west of New South Wales
To its west rises the dune sea of the Simpson Desert. To the east lies the Strzelecki Desert, while the Tirari Desert is found to the southwest across sections of the Lake Eyre region. Long desert tracks, especially the Birdsville Track, skirt these landscapes and connect remote towns and cattle stations.
From the perspective of a desert traveller, the Sturt Stony Desert is a transition zone: a stony bridge between great sand seas, gas fields, and the low-lying salt lake country around Lake Eyre.
Gibber Plains: A Desert Made of Stone
So what exactly is a gibber plain? In Australian usage, “gibber” refers to small stones or pebbles that densely cover the ground. Over time, wind removes finer dust and sand, leaving a tightly packed pavement of stones known as desert pavement.
On the Sturt Stony Desert, these stones are mostly silcrete, a very hard, silica-rich rock that once formed a crust over the region. As ancient surfaces were slowly eroded, the crust was broken into fragments that now armour the landscape. Many stones are rounded on top and embedded in clay, making the surface surprisingly stable to walk on, even if it looks harsh.
Similar landforms exist elsewhere in the world – for example the reg of the Sahara or the serir of the eastern Sahara – but Australia’s gibber has its own character, with rich iron-oxide colours and the distinctive dark sheen of desert varnish.
Climate: Life on the Edge of Drought
The climate of the Sturt Stony Desert is dominated by heat, dryness and variability. Sitting deep within the continent, it is far from moderating sea breezes and strongly influenced by subtropical high-pressure systems.
Most years the region receives only a small amount of rain, often from summer thunderstorms or the remnants of tropical systems drifting down from northern Australia. Months can pass with blue skies and no measurable precipitation. Then, suddenly, a single system can deliver a year’s worth of rain in a few days, flooding creeks and claypans and sending water toward Lake Eyre.
For plants, animals and people, survival here depends on the ability to cope with long droughts punctuated by rare booms. It is a boom-and-bust environment in the truest sense.
Plants of the Stone Country
Because the gibber plains shed water rapidly, many plants are restricted to slightly lower or finer-soiled areas. Typical vegetation patterns include:
- Chenopod shrublands dominated by saltbush and bluebush on clayey flats
- Grassy swales with Mitchell grass and other tough perennials that can resprout after drought
- Mulga and acacia woodlands along ephemeral drainage lines and on gently raised ground
- Mallee eucalypts and belah stands toward the margins of the stony plains
- Ephemeral herbs and desert wildflowers that appear after good rainfall, then vanish into the soil seed bank
Roots are often deep or widely spreading, allowing plants to make the most of brief pulses of soil moisture. Many species also have salty or leathery leaves to reduce water loss.
Wildlife of the Gibber Plains
The wildlife of the Sturt Stony Desert is a masterclass in adaptation. A few stand-out examples:
- Kowari: a small, agile predator that sprints across stones at night, hunting insects, rodents and small birds. It often digs burrows in tiny islands of sand within the gibber.
- Long-haired rat: this native rodent can explode in numbers after big rains when food is abundant, then crash back to near invisibility during drought.
- Letter-winged kite: a pale, ghostlike bird of prey that becomes more common when rat numbers boom, gliding silently over the plains at night.
- Red kangaroo: the iconic outback kangaroo, travelling long distances between sparse feed and scattered water points.
- Reptiles: skinks, geckos, dragons and snakes that use stones as heat batteries by day and shelter by night.
Many of these species are sensitive to changes in grazing pressure, introduced predators and climate. Conservation projects increasingly monitor their populations as indicators of the health of the wider desert ecosystem.
First Peoples and the Lake Eyre Basin
The Sturt Stony Desert lies within the broader Lake Eyre Basin, a region where Aboriginal peoples have lived for tens of thousands of years. Desert pavements, dune fields, floodplains and springs all form part of Country – a living cultural landscape with deep spiritual and practical significance.
Traditional knowledge in this region includes:
- Reading subtle signs of water and weather in an arid environment
- Using seasonal movements along creeks, floodplains and stone country
- Maintaining storylines that connect dunes, lakes, mound springs and stony deserts
Modern management of the Lake Eyre Basin increasingly brings together Traditional Owners, scientists and governments, recognising that long-term care of this fragile desert depends on both cultural knowledge and contemporary research.
Exploration, Naming and Outback Travel
The desert is named after the British explorer Charles Sturt, who entered this region in the mid-1840s while searching for an imagined inland sea. Instead of water he found a “stony desert” so harsh that the stones lamed his horses and wore down the hooves of sheep and cattle. The experience reshaped European ideas about Australia’s interior.
Later, the stony country became part of outback stock routes linking remote cattle and sheep stations. The famous Birdsville Track passes through nearby desert landscapes, carrying supplies, mail and, more recently, outback travellers.
Today, the Sturt Stony Desert remains sparsely inhabited. Gas fields, scattered pastoral leases and a handful of tracks are the main signs of permanent European presence. For most visitors this is still a place of huge horizons and genuine remoteness.
A Natural Laboratory – From Lake Eyre to Mars Analogues
Because of its extreme aridity, ancient landforms and thin veneer of stones, the Sturt Stony Desert has become a valuable site for scientific research. Studies in the region explore:
- How desert pavements form and persist over long geological timescales
- How plants and animals respond to rare flood events in the Lake Eyre Basin
- Groundwater connections to the Great Artesian Basin and the role of mound springs
- How stony desert surfaces can act as analogues for Martian landscapes, useful for training and even for testing exploration technologies
Stand on a gibber plain at sunset and it is easy to see why planetary scientists are interested – the combination of rust-red stones, thin atmosphere near the ground and long, sharp shadows feels almost other-worldly.
Visiting the Sturt Stony Desert Safely
Reaching the Sturt Stony Desert is an adventure in itself. This is not a casual day trip from a coastal city, and visitors need to be well prepared.
Practical Tips for Travellers
- Use a high-clearance 4WD and ensure your vehicle is well maintained.
- Carry ample water, food and fuel – far more than you think you will need.
- Check road conditions and weather forecasts before you travel; tracks can close after heavy rain.
- Respect station properties, traditional lands and any access restrictions or permits.
- Travel with at least one other vehicle or carry a satellite communication device in case of emergency.
- Leave no trace: pack out all rubbish, avoid driving off established tracks and never disturb cultural sites or wildlife.
For those who prepare carefully and show respect, the reward is a rare experience of silence, space and starlight in one of the most striking stone deserts on the planet.
