What is the Great Victoria Desert?

The Great Victoria Desert is the largest desert in Australia, covering about 348,750 square kilometres. It straddles the border between South Australia and Western Australia, stretching from the Eyre Highway in the south to the Gibson Desert in the north and from the Eastern Goldfields to inland from the Stuart Range.

The desert was named in 1875 by British explorer Ernest Giles for Queen Victoria, on his crossing of the continent from Beltana in South Australia to Perth. It is characterised by long parallel red sand dunes, salt lakes, spinifex plains, and groves of mulga and marble gum eucalyptus. Annual rainfall ranges from 150 to 250 millimetres, falling in unpredictable summer thunderstorms.

The Great Victoria Desert is the traditional country of the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra, Spinifex, and Tjuntjuntjara peoples. The Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in northern South Australia and the Spinifex Native Title Determination in Western Australia cover substantial areas, recognising continuous Aboriginal connection to country.

Two events in the 1950s left a controversial legacy. The British government, with Australian agreement, conducted seven nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and Emu Field on the southern edge of the desert between 1953 and 1963. Aboriginal communities were displaced and many were exposed to fallout. A 1985 Royal Commission found the tests had been conducted with inadequate care, and clean-up operations continued into the 2000s. The Maralinga lands were returned to the Maralinga Tjarutja people in 2009. Today the desert is largely uninhabited, with the Great Victoria Desert Biosphere Reserve and several Indigenous Protected Areas covering most of its area.