South Australia (Outback Region)
Lake Eyre National Park
This vast park takes in all of Lake Eyre North and the Tirari Desert. It Protects an important desert wilderness. Lake Eyre has international significance, both for its large expanse of salt pan and its occasional floodings. The Tirari Desert is noted for its vast north-south dunes and salt lakes and in one, Lake Ngapakaldi, important fossil deposits have been discovered. Vegetation in the park tends to be low and stunted, consisting mainly of samphire, saltbush and bluebush, with some acacia and cassia. Lake Eyre has only been full of water three times in living memory (and those only in the last fifteen years).
This massive salt lake is caught between the Simpson and Strzelecki deserts in a region where the annual evaporation rate is thirty times greater than the rainfall. Most years a little water trickles into the lake from its million-square-kilometre catchment area, which extends well into central Queensland and the Northern Territory, but floods have filled the basin only four times since white settlement of the region – most dramatically in 1974, when the lake expanded to a length of 140km. 

A hypnotic, glaring salt crust usually covers the southern bays, thick enough in 1964 to be used as a range for Donald Campbell’s successful crack at the world land-speed record. It’s a mysterious, spiritual landscape with harsh surroundings paved by shiny gibber stones and walled by red dunes, and some wildlife manages to get by in the incredible emptiness. The resident Lake Eyre dragon is a diminutive, spotted grey lizard often seen skimming over the crust, and the rare flooding attracts dense flocks of birds, wakes the plump water-holding frog from hibernation and causes the plants to burst into colour.

While you can fly over the lake (make bookings through the Oasis Café in Marree), only 4WDs can reach the shore 95km north of Marree, though the track to the campsite at a gum-shaded waterhole, just over halfway at Muloorina Homestead, is good. Timber at the lake is sparse and protected, which means that there’s little shade and no firewood. There’s no one to help you if something goes wrong, so don’t drive on the lake’s crust – should you fall through, it’s impossible to extricate your vehicle from the grey slush below.