The Brain
A patch of still-wet ground, seen from the air over Anna Creek Station around the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre area. There had been some unseasonal rain in the area around that time and pilots had nicknamed this patch "The Brain".
The red colour is from the gibber plains. The gibber plains are interesting to see from the ground and vary in colour from dark reds to oranges. The sharp stones made early exploration of the hot desert areas even more difficult and dreadful to traverse especially for the soft-footed camels that were used by explorers such as Charles Sturt in his search for an 'inland sea' in 1845.
Gibber, rock- and pebble-littered area of arid or semi-arid country in Australia. The rocks are generally angular fragments formed from broken up duricrust, usually silcrete, a hardened crust of soil cemented by silica (SiO2). The gravel cover may be only one rock fragment deep, or it may consist of several layers buried in fine-grained material that is thought to have been blown in. A gibber is generally considered a result of mechanical weathering because silica is almost inert to chemical weathering.
The Brain
A patch of still-wet ground, seen from the air over Anna Creek Station around the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre area. There had been some unseasonal rain in the area around that time and pilots had nicknamed this patch "The Brain".
The red colour is from the gibber plains. The gibber plains are interesting to see from the ground and vary in colour from dark reds to oranges. The sharp stones made early exploration of the hot desert areas even more difficult and dreadful to traverse especially for the soft-footed camels that were used by explorers such as Charles Sturt in his search for an 'inland sea' in 1845.
Gibber, rock- and pebble-littered area of arid or semi-arid country in Australia. The rocks are generally angular fragments formed from broken up duricrust, usually silcrete, a hardened crust of soil cemented by silica (SiO2). The gravel cover may be only one rock fragment deep, or it may consist of several layers buried in fine-grained material that is thought to have been blown in. A gibber is generally considered a result of mechanical weathering because silica is almost inert to chemical weathering.