Two-thirds of australia is
as dry as a bone -
over 5 million square kilometers
of rock, scrub and sand.
When europeans came looking for farmland
in the centre - just 150 years ago -
they were dismayed by what they found.
They wrote it off as the
'dead centre', rejected it,
as a good-for-nothing wasteland.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
The continent's dry heartland is
like nothing else on the planet,
and it's full of life.
But could the new australians
ever see this spectacular land,
and love it, for what it really is?
Although the centre is hot,
much of it doesn't look
like desert at all.
The first european explorers were
convinced they'd find pasture here.
They found swathes of tall grass -
surely the answer to their prayers.
But spinifex is as tough as old boots.
It's the only grass that can grow
in the poorest and driest soils.
The lack of native grazing animals
should have tipped them off.
Not even kangaroos can chew on this stuff.
But these grasslands were dotted
with strange red mounds,
a clue to what did thrive here.
There are grazers, billions of them.
The explorers just couldn't see them.
Termites are the only animals
that can stomach spinifex.
The grasslands cover
a quarter of the continent,
so termites are one of the most
powerful forces in australia.
They've turned a virtually inedible
grass into their bread and butter.
They have it all to themselves.
By chewing it up with spit and soil,
termites can even turn spinifex
into walls that harden like brick.
The result is a multi-story complex
that's both cool and secure.
And not just for termites.
At any one time the mound
is crawling with spiders,
centipedes, geckos and skinks.
The termites themselves
are a living larder.
Most of the grassland's
life and death struggles
are played out along the
mound's humid passageways.
For the knob-tailed gecko
it's murder in the dark.
But the centipede is no walkover.
Each mound is a world within a world.
Termites eat grass; centipedes eat
termites; geckoes eat centipedes.
In the desert, termites
make the world go round.
In the grasslands outside the mounds,
there are others waiting to pounce.
Low-energy lizards have really struck
it rich in this desert economy.
They're virtually drought-proof
because they can survive on far less
food and water than mammals or birds
and so there are millions of them.
Australia's desert wealth can
be measured not in pasture,
but in the phenomenal
variety of lizards per acre.
They have this unpredictable
country licked.
Most lizards eat anything,
but this one is picky.
The thorny devil only
eats little black ants.
A thousand a day...
if it can get into the groove!
It's cleverer than it looks.
Ants know the whiff of a dead comrade,
so the devil never lets
them smell its breath.
It keeps lifting its head to puff away
the telltale formic acid fumes.
The ants never catch on.
The first europeans thought
all these animals were useless.
And when they didn't find rich grazing
land, they just saw emptiness -
the never never.
So it was a big surprise when they
found people making a living here.
Aboriginal people have survived in the
centre for over forty thousand years.
They moved across the land,
tapping into many different water
sources and living off bush tucker.
They understood how to make
the desert work for them.
They also used fire,
not just for cooking and warmth,
but to manage the land.
They still use fire stick farming today.
To burn off the prickly spinifex,
and encourage edible plants
to grow in its place.
It's a controlled
version of the wild fires
that would have swept through the outback
even before these people arrived.
Most of the plants in the bush are dry
and naturally packed with oils.
They ignite readily but
they don't always die.
And their seeds often survive a blaze.
The scorched earth is
a kick-start for new growth;
bush tomatoes, yams and
bush-berries flourish.
Strange as it may seem,
many plants have evolved to live with fire
and so has the wildlife.
The mala is a small desert marsupial
that cannot breed without the succulent
shoots that germinate after fire.
Bilbies also benefit
from fire stick farming.
They look like down-under bugs bunnies
but they're marsupials too.
They eat more or less anything.
But after a blaze
the poor desert soil
is fertilized by the ash,
so there's a greater variety of plants
and insects for them to sample.
Like the mala,
they feed after dark to avoid dehydration.
It's wickedly hot during the day,
so some kind of shelter is vital.
They have powerful front legs
and claws to help with that.
Two metres down is an air-conditioned
retreat for the whole family,
and it's also the safest place
to be during a grass-fire.
In good years, after a burn,
they can have four litters on the trot.
So they can breed a bit like rabbits!
To survive in the outback you need
to understand how it ticks.
Something the aboriginal people had
learned from the life around them.
To them this landscape
is steeped in meaning.
Their journeys across the centre follow
paths of memory and understanding,
which often meet at sacred places
like kata tjuta... and uluru.
To us it's a photo opportunity.
To them it's a timeless place that
describes the way they see the world.
Patterns of erosion on uluru's surface
tell the story of how the people
are connected to their ancestors
and to the land.
They are intimate with it.
But for newcomers,
the desert heart couldn't be more alien.
Frustrated europeans battled to find
a route across the continent.
Having travelled thousands of kilometers
over the flattest country in the world,
they were disheartened to find a chain
of mountains blocking their way.
The macdonnell ranges were
once himalayan-sized,
but australia's so old,
they've crumbled and rusted
into a geriatric spine.
Even so, it was a challenge
to find a way through.
Unexpectedly,
their search took them from desert to
an inner sanctum of natural wonders.
65 million years ago australia was
covered in luxuriant forests like these.
This valley of red cabbage palms
is the last of their kind.
They were cradled here
as the climate dried up,
saved from drying out because
the porous rocks around them
hold water like a sponge.
Some of the trickle-fed
pools never dry out.
That's heaven in a place where
it might not rain for years.
Here, in the heart of the desert,
explorers were amazed
to find fresh-water fish.
The billabongs in the
ranges are so isolated
that some fish are found
only in particular pools.
This must have been a sight for sore eyes.
Because of this permanent water,
there are more bird species in australia's
deserts than in all of britain.
It's a particular lifesaver to birds
on a dry diet of seeds,
such as budgies... and zebra finches
that need frequent drinks.
The finches pump the water up with
their tongues. They need to be quick.
They're forced to play cat and
mouse with the local falcons.
But it's the spectator that gets lucky.
Life is a gamble in the desert...
and there are only a few deep,
shady gorges that never dry out.
That's where black-footed rock wallabies
hole up in the crevices and caves.
A sun-soaked ledge takes
away the night-chill.
Usually they're not around in the day,
but this is the breeding season
and life is getting a bit frenetic.
The male is trying to winkle
himself in behind a female.
But she's determined to keep
her back to the wall!
To reach all the females
he needs mountain-goat precision
and wallaby spring-loading.
They'd like to stay
glued to the rock face,
but most of their food
is on the gully floor.
Rock wallabies are not
much bigger than a cat.
Packs of dingoes work these gorges,
so they need to watch out.
As the day stokes up
they do the sensible thing
and find some shade.
In most other deserts of the world
rainfall follows a pattern,
however scarce it might be.
In australia it's totally
and utterly erratic.
The rain is usually too light
to make a difference.
But the mountains channel
whatever does fall.
Rivulets become creeks and then rivers.
This is how a little goes a long way.
The finke river has been cutting
its course out of the central ranges
for nearly 300 million years.
It's thought to be one of
the oldest rivers on earth.
It doesn't go to the sea,
but heads further into the desert
and over a 700-kilometre route
it transforms the dry lands
beyond the mountains.
Even as a ribbon of sand it's
beaded with precious waterholes.
And long after water has
vanished from the surface,
an avenue of trees can tap into
water hidden deep in the sand.
Red-tailed black-cockatoos
are never far from the finke.
They flock along it - to wherever
the food and water happen to be.
The large trees are a real draw.
It's in their shade that the cockies
spend the hot afternoons socializing.
Red river gums offer
multi-storey housing...
with made-to-measure nest holes.
These cockatoos are very large parrots,
so they need something roomy.
It'll be a tight squeeze once
mum's in there too.
These intelligent birds
can live for over 50 years,
and they spend a whole year
raising a single chick.
It has a lot to learn.
The outback is not a predictable place.
In a long run of difficult years cockatoos
must fall back on past experience
to find enough to eat.
Aboriginal people also
had to be resourceful
and they never stayed
too long in one place.
The finke was a natural highway...
so not surprisingly it also opened
up the centre to newcomers.
They arrived on imported camels and
muscled-in around the reliable waterholes.
The aborigines fought this land-grab.
There were ugly conflicts.
By the late 1880s even the poorest
rangeland had been settled.
But many cattle stations went
bust after a few dry years.
It's easy to get caught out.
The centre can look more
promising than it is.
Mulga country doesn't
even seem like desert.
It's a dense woodland of acacias,
bloodwoods and ghost gums,
rooted in the out-wash
of the central ranges.
Most woody shrubs are
thirsty and demanding,
but these tough plants have flourished,
despite the poor, dry soils...
and despite unwelcome invaders.
In the 1880s camel-trains were
the only way to cross the desert
but once roads had been built
the camels were abandoned.
With no natural predators they've
made themselves at home.
Australia is now the only country
where one-humped camels
live naturally in the wild.
In the breeding season
males do their best to pull as
many females as they can.
The dulaa - an inflatable sac
lining the roof of their mouths -
could only be a camel turn-on.
But mostly, this display is for the males.
The biggest bull starts to
throw his weight around.
Things can get really heavy.
This upstart gets well and truly bounced.
Over half a million camels
roam the centre now.
They're no longer a curiosity,
they're serious pests.
Despite their over-whelming presence,
...it's the little guys who run the place.
Every morning a huge ground-level
operation takes place.
Units of meat ants fan out
to find overnight carnage.
They'll butcher this dead grasshopper...
...and then carry the body-parts
back to their bunker.
Meat ants outnumber
everything at floor level.
All other invertebrates are dead meat.
Taken belowground these bodies are
an extra dose of fertility in the soil.
It's ants that give mulga trees the boost
they need to grow in the desert.
Deep in shade is a nest of bulldog ants.
There are over a thousand different
species of ant in australia,
but these are the ankle-biters.
Each one is four
centimeters of aggression.
A creature of the underworld.
But they aren't out for themselves.
Caring and sharing
works best in the desert.
Hunters bring back insects -
even small reptiles -
which feed everyone inside.
They've dug shafts two metres underground.
The queen and her larvae are
coddled in the deepest, coolest,
and best protected chambers.
Teamwork is the ultimate buffer
against extreme heat and drought.
The queen produces
a constant supply of larvae.
Together with squads of carers,
fortress-builders and food-gatherers,
these colonies are virtually immortal.
Beyond the influence of the
ranges and the finke river,
this driest of continents presents
the greatest challenge.
The largest area of parallel
sand dunes in the world.
The simpson desert would
cover most of britain.
The early explorers miscalculated
much of australia's desert.
But there's no mistaking the simpson.
The towering ridges were
piled up 18,000 years ago...
by storm-force, prevailing winds.
It's still windy today.
Aboriginal people avoided it
and when the first european reached it,
charles sturt thought he
'stood at the gates of hell.'
Europeans didn't cross it
until just over 60 years ago.
In 1939 a scientific expedition
rode into the inferno.
It was part field trip, part adventure -
the white man's stamp on the last
area of australia to be explored.
A final frontier where it hits 50
degrees centigrade in summer
and where sandstorms can blow for days.
The expedition never saw how
animals cope in this fan oven
because most of them stay well hidden.
The main survival trick is
to only come out at night.
There are a surprising number of
animals in the desert hardcore.
One of the toughest is the mulgara.
It doesn't even need to drink.
Insects are 80% water
so it gets all the food and liquid
it needs from its nocturnal hunts.
Nor can they be fussy about what they eat.
Mulgara will switch between anything -
birds, lizards, insects,
spiders, even other mammals.
And they can store fat
in their stubby tails
to see them through the lean times.
No other country has so many
feisty little desert carnivores.
Even when a male makes a romantic advance,
it's a ferocious affair
that can last for 8 hours.
Although they mate every year,
many litters die.
Sometimes there's just not enough food.
But mulgara can live for over six years.
A few individuals survive
even the longest droughts
so at least some babies are
likely to make it through.
The simpson desert is hot,
but it's not hell,
even for little devils.
Under the sand dunes it's cooler
and the temperature stays stable.
A good place for
thorny devil eggs to incubate.
Although the egg chamber
is a bit gritty, it's safe.
So they can take their time hatching out.
It's just a halfway house.
Once they've rested, and
their spikes have hardened up,
the babies will dig their way out.
Tunnelling up through half a metre
of sand when you're thumb-sized,
must seem like the great escape.
First they get their bearings.
They could easily overheat
so they look for shade.
Running on instinct seems
to work - in the end.
And they find their first meal of ants.
The simpson desert might seem
like a life sentence to humans,
but not to the free-roaming
symbol of the outback.
Red kangaroos are australia's
biggest native animal,
standing taller than a man.
But they live on sparse grasses and herbs.
Five metre bounds are a highly
efficient way to cover lots of ground
in the search for scattered food & water.
Many roos die during severe droughts.
But they get numbers back up in good times
by becoming permanent breeding machines.
At any one time a female can have
an embryo, on hold, inside her...
a joey suckling on one type
of milk in her pouch.
...and a young-at-foot
drinking a different type of milk
from a separate nipple.
With all this going on
the males are in a constant
state of sexual tension.
They only lose their drive in the
very driest and hottest years
when their testes, quite literally, fry.
This way everyone saves energy!
Even though they're big,
kangaroos don't need liquid every day.
But where do they find a drink
in a sun-baked land with
little or no surface water?
On the western edge of the
simpson desert there's an oasis.
It's a series of natural springs that
are forced up from underground.
Aboriginal people knew where to find them
and which springs flowed
even in the worst droughts.
Australia's such a vast continent that
early explorers were convinced
they'd find an inland body of water.
When they first asked about
the existence of these springs,
the aboriginal people lied.
This knowledge was gold dust.
Each pool is like a desert spa
complete with exclusive clients.
The hot-water vents stir up
a cocktail of algae and other food,
which is where some of the fish feed.
These aren't called dalhousie
hardyheads for nothing.
They're swimming in water
that's halfway to boiling point.
The dalhousie springs,
as they're now known,
leak out from a much larger and
more extraordinary natural wonder.
One of the biggest underground reservoirs
anywhere - the great artesian basin.
Much of this water fell as
heavy rain long ago, out east.
It's taken two million years
to seep slowly down
through the porous underlying rock,
to the centre.
It would be many decades
before the colonists learned
to pump this water up for
their sheep and cattle stations.
In the very early days
they'd pinned all their hopes
on rumours of an inland sea.
This is what they found.
From a distance it looks like a snowfield,
except that here, an ice cream
would melt in seconds.
It's a salt-lake.
Lake eyre covers 9,000 square kilometers
and lies 15 meters below sea level.
It's the very sump of australia.
A sea alright,
but one of mud, covered with a blinding,
heat-thickened salt-crust.
In 1840,
when edward john eyre discovered it,
he stared in horror at
'one vast, low and dreary waste'.
Although the lake was named after him,
his hopes of finding water were crushed.
He called it australia's dead heart
and the name stuck.
Eyre, like most of the europeans
who came after him,
never got to grips with
australia's desert centre.
They'd never experienced a place
so random, so unforgiving.
A place where it never rains,
but it pours.
You might have to wait
over ten years to see this.
And every thirty years or so, it rains
so hard even noah would be impressed.
Thousands of square kilometers
of desert are awash.
But as these epic floods drain away,
something truly remarkable happens.
None of this water
will ever reach the sea.
It flows inwards to the country's
lowest point - lake eyre.
Edward eyre had been in the
right place at the wrong time.
And missed one of australia's
most astonishing spectacles.
It's not known whether birds on the coast,
fifteen hundred kilometres away,
can smell the water
or whether they sense a change
in the atmosphere.
But they arrive from all over australia,
and in their thousands.
Pelicans head for the islands
where their nests will be safe
from goannas and dingoes.
By the time
the last spaces are being filled,
some chicks will have hatched already.
But how do they know to breed here?
If this desert sea only forms
every three decades,
how do they know what it has to offer?
Pelicans are long-lived,
and it's now believed that the wise
old birds remember where to go.
And they aren't the only ones
to keep coming back.
These waters are stuffed
beyond imagination with fish,
shrimps, snails, mussels and yabbies.
A population explosion
triggered by the floods.
And it's all within easy reach.
Pelicans operate like a fleet of trawlers,
scooping their netted beaks
through shoals of fish.
Then when their crops are full they return
to off-load the catch back at the nest.
This isn't just a family gathering.
It's a pelican pick-up joint.
Birds from different parts
of australia get together,
and in this way pelicans keep
their genes well mixed.
There are around 50,000
pairs in this colony,
and some chicks are nearly
as large as their parents.
In their frenzy to eat the big ones almost
suffocate down their parent's gullet.
They have to be shaken out.
Pelicans will spend the best part of
a year here, breeding to the bitter end.
The chicks that hatch last may not have
fledged by the time the fish run out.
Lake eyre will evaporate into mere memory.
Australia's desert heartland
is dominated by this breath-taking
cycle of drought and flood.
It doesn't follow any rules, which is why,
for over a century most new settlers
turned their backs on it.
Only very recently did the centre
become a place to visit.
People have come to love its stark
beauty and intriguing detail.
With understanding has come respect,
both for its nature and its people.
It's now treasured as
the very essence of australia.
The much-maligned centre has
finally been taken to heart.
