Sturt National Park; dry, distant and dramatic

It's a Sydney conceit to think of anywhere west of the Blue Mountains (ie less than 100 kilometres from the sea) as 'western New South Wales'. Sturt National Park however fully merits the description. It is the furthest New South Wales park from Sydney (more than 1000 kilometres away), the second largest park in the state at nearly 350,000 hectares - and one of my favourites. It is way up in the furthest north-west corner, where New South Wales meets Queensland and South Australia.

It was declared in 1972, when drought-hammered pastoralists were happy to sell up and move somewhere more conducive to commercial land management. Several properties were incorporated into the huge park. These were not the first Europeans to be forced to retreat by the natural cycle of El Niño-driven drought and occasional flooding. In 1845 Charles Sturt was stranded at a rare permanent waterhole near here by drought for six months, in the course of his epic - but crazy - odyssey searching for the mythical inland sea that he passionately believed in. 130 years later his name was appended to the new park, though I think and hope that today a more appropriate local indigenous name might be found in such a situation.

Sturt National Park embodies the ancient landscapes of vast open plains that form an important part of our nation-continent. 

Here the jump-ups rise above gibber plains, with a dry stream-line snaking through.

Perhaps that caption needs some clarification! The land surface is part of an ancient bowl-shaped depression which forms the Great Artesian Basin; it is slowly eroding away. Where the old ranges contained a layer of hard silcrete - dissolved silicon salts which settled out like concrete - erosion was greatly slowed when this layer came to the surface. The tough cap is resistant to wearing away, and the resulting characteristic flat-topped hills are known as jump-ups, or breakaways.

Jump-ups, Sturt NP.

Erosion tends to act here from the sides, rather than above; as a result the silcrete cap is undercut, breaks away at the edges, and tumbles in small stones to the plains below. These pebbles, polished by wind and blowing sand, are gibbers; gibber plains cover vast areas of Australia.

Gibber plains, Sturt NP. The tough chenopods covering the surface here are the
result of a relatively wet season.
Below (from an old slide!) is a gibber plain in north-eastern South Australia in a dry season, bare to the horizon.

Near a couple of ephemeral creek lines, River Red Gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) grow, and beyond them on the flood plains Coolabah (E. coolabah); this tree is known to every Australian from a line from Waltzing Matilda (arguably our 'other national anthem') though not many know what it looks like.

Fort Grey campsite, Sturt National Park; early morning among the Coolabahs.

Here are some typical birds of Sturt, in and even above the landscape.

Bluebonnet (Northiella haematogaster) in Belah (Casuarina pauper).
This parrot is found throughout inland south-eastern Australia.

Cockatiels (Nymphicus hollandicus), the smallest Australian cockatoo, sadly better
known as a cage bird.

Nankeen Kestrel (Falco cenchroides) using the updraft from the edge of a jump-up.

Male Brown Songlark (Cincloramphus cruralis) in prickly copperburr, Sclerolaena sp.

Gibber Chat (Ashbyia lovensis); the Australian chats are a specialised group of ground-dwelling honeyeaters.
This one is often regarded as 'difficult' by bird-watchers, but it's more just that it lives in remote areas.

Wedge-tailed Eagle (Aquila audax).
Below; where there are no tall trees, an eagle must build its nest where it can.

 

While we were there last year there was little flowering - it had mostly finished as the land started to dry out after the rains, but there were a few exceptions.

Velvet-leaf Hibiscus (H. krichauffianus).

Sturt is remote, in terms of requiring a long drive to get there, but the little town of Tibooburra on its southern border these days has all the supplies you need, including accommodation if you don't feel like camping.

On the other hand it's hard to beat the sun coming up through the Coolabahs, while flocks of Budgerigars and Cockatiels come in to feed on the grass seeds behind the tent.