Gibson Desert forms part of the plateau of Western Australia. The desert covers 60,000 square miles (156,000 square kilometers). It stretches from the Great Sandy Desert in the north to the Great Victoria Desert in the south. It lies along the Tropic of Capricorn between Lake Disappointment in the west and Lake Macdonald along the border between Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Lake Disappointment is a salt lake (dry salt pan that only sometimes contains water).
The desert consists of sand dunes, rocky areas, and gibber plains (areas with stones that have become flat and smooth through thousands of years of erosion). Australian Aboriginal people have lived in the area for thousands of years. The British explorer Ernest Giles named the desert after his companion Alfred Gibson, who died while the men were attempting to cross the desert.
See also Australian Desert ; Giles, Ernest ; Salt lakes .
