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Great Victoria Desert
desert in Western Australia and South Australia / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Great Victoria Desert is the largest desert in Australia.[1][2] It consists of sand dunes, small sandhills, grassland plains, areas with closely packed pebbles (called desert pavement or gibber plains) and salt lakes. The desert is an Australian IBRA.[3]
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The desert covers a large area, about 42,000,000 ha (103,784,260 acres) in the states of Western Australia and South Australia.[2] The distance from east to west is about 700 km (435 mi).[2] It is very dry, getting only between 200 mm (8 in) and 250 mm (10 in) of rain each year.[2] It is surrounded by other very dry areas including the Nullabor Plain to the south, the Gibson Desert to the north, Sturt's Stony Desert to the east. It was named by the explorer Ernest Giles in 1875, after Queen Victoria.[2] Aboriginal people have lived in the desert for more than 24,000 years.[2]
Between 1953 and 1957, the British government exploded nine atomic bombs in the Great Victoria Desert at Maralinga and Emu.[2]