The Little Desert is a national park in Victoria (Australia), 375 km west of Melbourne. It extends from the Wimmera River in the east to near Naracoorte over the South Australian border in the west. Motto: Peace and Prosperity Nickname: Garden State Other Australian states and territories Capital Melbourne Government Governor Premier Const. ... The City of Melbournes coat of arms The central business district of Melbourne, viewed from the north Alternate meanings: Melbourne (disambiguation) Melbourne is the capital and largest city of the state of Victoria, and the second largest city in Australia, with a population of 52,117 in the Central... A historic locomotive in a park in Naracoorte Grapevines near Naracoorte Naracoorte (36°57′ S 140°45′ E, approx. ... Motto: United for the Common Wealth Nickname: Festival State Other Australian states and territories Capital Adelaide Government Governor Premier Const. ...

The vegetation of the park ranges from pure mallee heathland in the Eastern Block to cypress pine and casuarina woodlands in the moister Western Block. In the Western Block, there are large areas of seasonal swampland formed over claypans. Laterites are scattered throughout the sandy areas of the park and characterised by broombush. The most famous animal in the park is the unusual mallee fowl, the only mound-building bird to live in an arid region, and there is also the solitary insectivorous southern scrub robin (Drymodes brunneophygia). Brush-tailed possums and grey kangaroos are common throughout the park, and in the lizards can be observed baking in the sun. A freshwater swamp swamp (disambiguation) A swamp is a wetland that features permanent inundation of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water, generally with a substantial number of hummocks, or dry-land protrusions. ... Laterite is a red-colored clay rich soil found in the tropics and subtropics. ...

It was established in the late 1960s after the state government announced an intention to sell uncommitted Crown Land for agriculture. The area in question held a great deal of relatively undisturbed mallee bushland, and was rich in wildflowers and fauna, including a number of threatened species. The term mallee has several separate but inter-related meanings. ...

The Little Desert receives an annual rainfall of about 480 millimetres (19 inches), though there is a gradient from 400 millimetres (16 inches) in the east to 600 millimetres (23.5 inches) near Naracoorte. This is about the same as the dry farming country surrounding the park, but the Little Desert has very deep sandy soils, which are much lower in essential nutrients than the (only moderately fertile) clay soils used for agriculture. These sandy soils have extraordinarily low contents of available nutrients and hold water very poorly, reducing the availability of water to plants. Thus, farming of the area proved quite impossible until deficiencies of zinc, copper and molybdenum were identified in the 1940s. Nutrients and the body A nutrient is any element or compound necessary for or contributing to an organisms metabolism, growth, or other functioning. ... General Name, Symbol, Number zinc, Zn, 30 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 12, 4, d Density, Hardness 7140 kg/m3, 2. ... General Name, Symbol, Number copper, Cu, 29 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11 , 4, d Density, Hardness 8920 kg/m3, 3. ... General Name, Symbol, Number molybdenum, Mo, 42 Chemical series transition metal Group, Period, Block 6 (VIB), 5, d Density, Hardness 10280 kg/m3, 5. ...

Even after fertilizers containing these elements became available, studies made by the Victorian government during the 1950s and 1960s showed that the Little Desert was not capable of becoming productive farmland and would fetch only low prices if cleared for agriculture. Local opposition to selling the land for farming was intense, and quickly gathered support around Victoria. The Bolte Government was unmoved by environmental concerns, but was eventually persuaded to retain the area as a nature reserve by economics: the estimated return from the growing business of ecotourism outweighed the meagre amount to be gained by selling off low-value marginal farmland. Fertilizers are chemicals given to plants with the intention of promoting growth; they are usually applied either via the soil or by foliar spraying. ... Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the... This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1960s. ... Hon Sir Henry Bolte Sir Henry Edward Bolte (20 May 1908 - 4 January 1990), Australian politician, was the longest serving Premier of the state of Victoria. ...

Over time, the Little Desert became a national park, beginning in 1968 with the eastern third and completed in 1986 with the addition of two more blocks to the west, thus covering all the sandy areas up to the South Australian border.

The Little Desert National Park is divided into three sections:

• Western Block
• Central Block
• Eastern Block

Roads within the park are only accessible by four-wheel-drive vehicles and most tracks in the Central and Western Blocks are closed from 1 June to 31 October or after wet weather because four-wheel-drives can damage the extraordinarily fragile ecosystems under wet conditions. Organised tours are available to the Eastern Block - the oldest and most accessible part of the park - from Melbourne and Dimboola, the nearest town in Victoria. June is the sixth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. ... October is the tenth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ... Dimboola (population 1500) is located in Hindmarsh Shire in the Wimmera region of Western Victoria, Australia, 334 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. ...

Fact sheet

• Area: 1326.47 km²
• Coordinates: 36° 36′ 24″ S 141° 11′ 19″ E
• Date of establishment: 1968
• Managing authorities: Parks Victoria
• IUCN category: II

See also: Protected areas of Victoria (Australia) Í . + ˚ This article is about longitude and latitude; see also UTM coordinate system Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (vertically) and longitude (horizontally); large version (pdf) The geographic (earth-mapping) coordinate system expresses every horizontal position on Earth by two of the three coordinates of a spherical coordinate system which... The World Conservation Union or International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) is an international organization dedicated to natural resource conservation. ... Victoria is the smallest mainland state in Australia. ...