tiabunna's photos with the keyword: floods

My earlier image "Bedourie Benches" in the little town of Bedourie, showed the community hall with the sign "Where the Simpson Desert meets the Channel Country". This aerial dawn image (best viewed large).shows what they mean! The country is very flat and occasional heavy rains further away bring floods which spread extensively. The country near the desert then comes to life with good pastures. In the distance are the dunes at the edge of the Simpson Desert, the world's largest parallel-dune sand desert (resulting from the prevailing winds). Further images, taken slightly later, in the PiPs.

In my ipernity article "Australian Fires" I mentioned that climate change can even bring extreme rainfall events, particularly in the tropics. Such an event happened in the middle of drought in the far north west of Queensland in February 2019, just before our Europe trip. The huge amount of rain resulted in terrible losses of cattle, but eventually some of the water found its way down to Australia's desert centre. As we flew over, on our return in late March, I was amazed by this sight from high above. This image (with haze removed) shows the Simpson Desert sandhills with lakes of water - normally just dry salt pans! I am still shaking my head that we saw this, as it happens only every 40 or 50 years. A more detailed report was in the national news. My second image taken a few minutes later (clickable in the PiP) shows the Diamantina River and the Birdsville Track (a remote Australian road). Explored.

Taken just a few minutes after my "Desert Water" image, this shows (at right) the Birdsville Track (famous in Australia as a remote desert road) and the (foreground) Diamantina River - usually dry but here spreading in flood. This rare event (only every 40-50 years) resulted from a massive rainfall event far away in northwest Queensland almost two months earlier.