The Australian Desert

The Australian Desert

The Australian desert is actually made up of many deserts. The Great Sandy, Great Victoria, and Simpson deserts are hot, sandy desert areas. The Gibson and Sturt deserts are hot and covered with stone.

These deserts combined cover about 1/3 of Australia. That's about 890,000 square miles (2,300,000 square kilometers).

For over 30,000 years, Aborigines (AB uh RIHJ uh neez) have lived in the Australian desert. These people are known as indigenous or aboriginal peoples. That means they are the earliest (or original) people to live in the area.

The deserts of Australia are also home to gold. Miners have worked gold mines in this area for over 100 years. Miners (and the Aborigines), work and live in very hot and very cold temperatures!