Desert water

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.