Great Victoria Desert Wildflowers - August 2014

Well after countless hours of sifting through my Wildflowers Books, I hope that I have named accurately the many varieties of Wildflowers that we encountered during our recent trip out into the Great Victoria Desert. Being purely an amateur, I have given it my very best and I know that there will be a few that I will need help from the experts out there to set the records straight. It is not until you get home and start to look at all the different number of flowers, that you get to realise that the desert was in peak condition from good rainfall that had fallen a number of months prior to out trip. The one downside to any Wildflower Book, is that none will give you a complete picture of just what is out there, and it is not possible to just use one book that should portray the area that we travelled through. So with the time it has taken me to go through the flowers, it may well help future travellers out into the Great Victoria Desert try to identify the many types of flowers that are out there when you stop to take a greater look at what is really out there, and not just a corrugated track with lots of trees and vegetation on the side of the road.

Ask many people how they classify a desert, and most times they will relate to the barren, large dunes that are portrayed as typically seen in the Dune Systems of North Africa. This is not true with the Desert of Australia, and at times it is hard to believe that you are travelling an actual Desert.

Over the years of travel, there is one Desert that draws us back, time after time and we have been very privileged to see the Great Victoria Desert showing off its many faces. This years trip over vast tracks of the Desert revealed large areas covered in the most vivid displays of wildflowers, with other sections having been burnt bare from wildfires that had ravaged large areas of the Desert.

Seeing the Great Victoria Desert the way that it was only emphasises the point that Australia’s largest desert system is such a special place to visit and it will not be our last trip out there, as there is still so much more to see and explore. Below is a selection of images that were captured when we were away and I know that there would have been many more Wildflowers out there that we missed.

If you ever have the opportunity to travel through this very special area, make sure that you stop to see and smell “the roses” as they say and you too may be rewarded with some special flowers that will add to your experience of travelling into the remote areas of South Australia and Western Australia.


If I have identified any flowers incorrectly, could I please ask the experts out there to advise me of the correct name.











































































































Stephen Langman

October 2014