Australia is not for nothing called the most aridcontinent 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 precipitation 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.
Just think:slightly less than half of Australia - solid deserts. And the rest of the 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. There are 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.
It would seem that an interesting and poeticto 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. The southeastern 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,Desert Victoria (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 his 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.
A huge natural landscape with an area of 424,400square kilometers stretched across the territory of 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 desert on the continent 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.
Принято считать, что песчаная пустыня – это 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 a 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.
Continent Australia itself is very isolatedfrom 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, saltpeter, kohia, saltwort.
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 marsupial animal resembling a rabbit. 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 the 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 formidable, with a look, all in the thorns, the lizard milk is not at all dangerous.
The Victoria Desert is not empty.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 blond 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 werethe brink of extinction. But now their strength due to the government's changed policy has again increased to five hundred thousand people. Aborigines of the desert practice traditional types of hunting and gathering.
The Victoria Desert in Australia is considered the capital cityopals. Here is concentrated about thirty percent of all world reserves of this stone. The miners worked out pits built for ... dwellings. After all, under the ground year-round is a very comfortable temperature of 22 degrees. So gradually in place of the mines appeared an underground town, which astonished aborigines called Kuber-Pedi. 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 Kunulda you can see rock carvings of ancient Aborigines.
