The Land Where Time Began
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Sturt's Stony Desert is situated in northeastern South Australia. This desert and adjacent areas are covered by a layer of siliceous stones resulting from the breakdown of the silcrete capping of the area.
The alluvium in the valley floors where the gibber plains have been dissected by erosion, having derived from the clay that underlies the silcrete capping, is a creamy colour. The stony rises between have irregular, concentric patterns that appear from the air to be formed of rings of fine debris that has washed down the slopes.
There are not many fixed dunes in this desert, with some irregular mobile forms. According to Sturt's account from 1840, there were on every side 'stupendous and almost unsurmountable sand ridges of a fiery red'.