Lake Eyre in the context of "Simpson Desert"

Following are two lists of terrestrial lakes that have surface areas of more than approximately 3,000 square kilometres (1,200 sq mi), ranked by area, excluding reservoirs and lagoons.

The area of some lakes can vary over time, either seasonally or from year to year. This is especially true of salt lakes in arid climates.This list therefore excludes seasonal lakes such as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre (maximum area 9,500 km, 3,700 sq mi), Mar Chiquita Lake (Córdoba) (maximum area 6,000 km, 2,300 sq mi), Chott el Djerid (up to 7,000 km, 2,700 sq mi, Lake Torrens (maximum area 5,745 km, 2,218 sq mi) and Great Salt Lake (maximum area, 1988, 8,500 km, 3,300 sq mi).

The Australian Alps are a mountain range in southeast Australia. The range comprises an interim Australian bioregion, and is the highest mountain range on mainland Australia. The range straddles the borders of eastern Victoria, southeastern New South Wales, and the Australian Capital Territory. It contains the only peaks exceeding 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in elevation on the Australian mainland, and is the only bioregion on the Australian mainland in which deep snow falls annually. The range comprises an area of 1,232,981 ha (3,046,760 acres).

The Australian Alps are part of the Great Dividing Range, the series of mountain and hill ranges and tablelands that runs about 3,000 km (1,900 mi) from northern Queensland, through New South Wales, and into the northern part of Victoria. This chain of highlands divides the drainage of the rivers that flow to the east into the Pacific Ocean from those that flow west into the drainage of the Murray–Darling Basin (and thence to the Southern Ocean) or into inland waters, such as Lake Eyre, which lie below sea level, or else evaporate rapidly.

The Lake Eyre basin (/ɛər/ AIR) is a drainage basin that covers just under one-sixth of all Australia. It is the largest endorheic basin in Australia and amongst the largest in the world, covering about 1,200,000 square kilometres (463,323 sq mi), including much of inland Queensland, large portions of South Australia and the Northern Territory, and a part of western New South Wales. The basin is also one of the largest, least-developed arid-zone basins with a high degree of variability anywhere. It supports only about 60,000 people and has no major irrigation, diversions, or flood-plain developments. Low-density grazing that sustains a large amount of wildlife is the major land use, occupying 82% of the total land within the basin. The Lake Eyre basin of precipitation (rain water) to a great extent geographically overlaps the Great Artesian Basin underneath.

The basin began as a sinking landmass mostly covered by forest and contained many more lakes than now. The climate has changed from wet to arid over the last 60 million years. Most of the rivers in the Lake Eyre basin are now slow flowing, flat, and completely dry for lengthy periods. When the country north of the basin floods, floodwaters drain via the main rivers of the basin—Cooper Creek, Georgina River, and Diamantina River—southwards towards Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, the country's lowest point at 16 metres (52 ft) below sea level. The water overflows the river banks, across the floodplains, filling waterholes and wetlands and carving new channels, giving rise to the name Channel Country. Most of the rain which falls in the north never reaches the lake 1,000 km away, which only fills occasionally.

The Diyari (/ˈdiːjɑːri/), alternatively transcribed as Dieri (/ˈdɪəri/), is an Indigenous Australian group of the South Australian desert originating in and around the delta of Cooper Creek to the east of Lake Eyre.

The Finke River, or Larapinta in the Indigenous Arrernte language, is a river in central Australia, the bed of which courses through the Northern Territory and the state of South Australia. It is one of the four main rivers of Lake Eyre Basin and is thought to be the oldest riverbed in the world. It flows for only a few days a year. When that happens, its water usually disappears into the sands of the Simpson Desert and rarely, if ever, reaches Lake Eyre.