Little Desert National Park

Australia

The Little Desert National Park is a national park in the Western District of Victoria, Australia. The 132647ha national park is situated near Dimboola, approximately 375km west of Melbourne and extends from the Wimmera River in the east to the South Australian border in the west near . While the region is surrounded by agricultural land, the area of the Little Desert itself "consists mainly of deep sandy soils with very low fertility, interspersed with small pockets of clay soils. There are occasional rocky, sandstone outcrops and buckshot rises. Average yearly rainfall varies remarkably from the east to the west." The Little Desert "remains relatively undisturbed by human activity, even though in the earlier years of European settlement it experienced some industry in the way of grazing and woodcutting." Now the desert is a National Park, and is "broken up into three blocks": Western Block, Central Block and Eastern Block; demarcated by two north-south roads, the Nhill-Harrow road and the Kaniva-Edenhope road. Today the National Park is an important tourist destination receiving about 50,000 visitors each year. Parks Victoria maintain multiple camping sites, walking tracks, look-outs and four-wheel-driving tracks throughout the park. Although most internal roads within the National Park are only accessible by four-wheel-drive vehicles and some are closed during winter or after wet weather.