The deserts of Australia cover 1,371,000 square kilometres (529,000 sq mi), or 18% of the Australian mainland. The largest of the landform types covering Australia, deserts – and their arid climatic conditions – are found primarily in the western plateau and interior lowlands of the country.
Australia's climate is mostly determined by the hot, sinking air of the subtropical high pressure belt. Dry conditions are associated with an El Niño–Southern Oscillation in Australia. Vegetation is arid areas is primarily dependent upon soil type.
Extensive areas are cover by longitudinal dunes. 40% of Australia is covered by dunes. Central Australia is very dry where averages are 150 mm of rainfall each year.
Australian feral camel are presenting problems for native vegetation. This is partly because Australian desert vegetation evolved without an major herbivore present.
Read more about Deserts Of Australia: Deserts, Desert Groups
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“The brotherhood of men does not imply their equality. Families have their fools and their men of genius, their black sheep and their saints, their worldly successes and their worldly failures. A man should treat his brothers lovingly and with justice, according to the deserts of each. But the deserts of every brother are not the same.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“No Raven’s wing can stretch the flight so far
As the torn bandrols of Napoleon’s war.
Choose then your climate, fix your best abode,
He’ll make you deserts and he’ll bring you blood.
How could you fear a dearth? have not mankind,
Tho slain by millions, millions left behind?
Has not conscription still the power to weild
Her annual faulchion o’er the human field?
A faithful harvester!”
—Joel Barlow (1754–1812)
“It is very considerably smaller than Australia and British Somaliland put together. As things stand at present there is nothing much the Texans can do about this, and ... they are inclined to shy away from the subject in ordinary conversation, muttering defensively about the size of oranges.”
—Alex Atkinson, British humor writer. repr. In Present Laughter, ed. Alan Coren (1982)