The Simpson Desert is a large area of dry, red sandy plain and dunes in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland in central Australia. It is the fourth-largest Australian desert, with an area of 176,500 km (68,100 sq mi).
The Wangkangurru Yarluyandi people know this area as Munga-Thirri.
The Gibson Desert is a large desert in Western Australia, mainly in an almost pristine state. It is about 155,000 square kilometres (60,000 sq mi) in size, making it the fifth largest desert in Australia, after the Great Victoria, Great Sandy, Tanami and Simpson deserts. The Gibson Desert is both an interim Australian bioregion and desert ecoregion.
Birdsville is a rural town and locality in the Shire of Diamantina, Queensland, Australia. The locality is on the Queensland border with both the Northern Territory and South Australia. The town is situated 10 kilometres (6 mi) north of the South Australian border. In the 2021 census, the locality of Birdsville had a population of 110 people.
It is a popular tourist destination with many people using it as a starting point across the Simpson Desert.
Lake Eyre (/ɛər/ AIR), officially known as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, is an endorheic lake in the east-central part of the Far North region of South Australia, some 700 km (435 mi) north of Adelaide. It is the largest ephemeral endorheic lake on the Australian continent, covering over 9,000 km (3,500 sq mi). The shallow lake is the depocentre of the vast endorheic Lake Eyre basin, and contains the lowest natural point in Australia, at approximately 15 m (49 ft) below sea level. The lake is most often empty, filling mostly when flooding occurs upstream in Channel Country, but almost always partially. On the rare occasions that it fills completely (only three times between 1860 and 2025), it is the largest lake in Australia, covering an area of up to 9,500 km (3,668 sq mi). When the lake is full, it has the same salinity as seawater, but becomes hypersaline as the lake dries up and the water evaporates. To the north of the lake is the Simpson Desert.
The lake was named in honour of Edward John Eyre, the first European to see it in 1840. It was officially renamed in December 2012 to include its Aboriginal Arabana name, Kati Thanda, in accordance with a policy of dual naming. The native title over most of the lake and surrounding region is held by the Arabana people, with the eastern portion allocated to the Dieri people.
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.