The Lake Eyre Basin is an expansive wilderness covering one sixth of Australia. Stretching over Queensland, the Northern Territory, New South Wales and South Australia, the basin represents one of the largest internal drainage systems in the world. The basin has been recognised as being of World Heritage value through the uniqueness of its hydrological systems.
Three river catchments in Queensland run into Lake Eyre; the Georgina, Diamantina and Cooper Creek. Their combined area of 563,217 square kilometres (140 million acres) represents a large proportion of Lake Eyre Basin's area of 1,200,000 square kilometres. They supply the great majority of water flows in the entire Basin. This "Channel Country" of the three river catchments, has flows that are sporadic but often massive, coming from flooding rains in the upper catchments, which lie in the monsoonal tropics, with the rivers funneling the floodwater into Australia's arid heartland.
Check out photos and video from the Channel Country campaign launch in Brisbane.
Conservation of Australia's Outback Wilderness (PDF -- See page 79) - Carol Booth and Dr Barry Traill 2008
The Simpon-Strzelecki Desert focus area covers 299,000 km2, and straddles four states: predominantly in the Northern Territory and South Australia, and also in Queensland and New South Wales. It is part of the Lake Eyre Basin. The focus area is equivalent to the IBRA bioregion of the same name (SSD), but encompasses only part of the Simpson Desert ecoregion delineated by WWF and described by Wilson (2001), due to the exclusion of the Channel Country bioregion (for explanation see Section of Focus Areas section).
Australian Floodplain Association
Coopers Creek Protection Group
The Wilderness Society