Travelers will have to wait a few months to enjoy a massive Australian desert park before access is permitted again next year.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service of South Australia has announced that Munga-Thirri— Simpson Desert National Park, Australia’s largest, is now closed to the public.
The area normally closes every summer due to safety concerns, as does a similar park in neighboring Queensland. This year’s summer closure had been scheduled to run from November 30 until March 15, 2024, but the park service says that unusually heavy rains and flooding occurring last week have already rendered the park inaccessible.
Washed-out or difficult-to-navigate roads only add to the danger that the notorious Simpson Desert heat poses to summer visitors. Daytime summer high temperatures in the Simpson Desert regularly exceed 50 degrees Celsius or 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
The service invites travelers to return in the Southern Hemisphere fall when cooler temperatures resume.
“The park features a wide variety of desert wildlife preserved in a landscape of varied dune systems, extensive playa lakes, spinifex grasslands, and acacia woodlands, and is linked to Witjira National Park,” NPWS says on its website.
Munga-Thirri—Simpson Desert National Park is not only Australia’s largest national park, but it’s also the nation’s newest. However, the park is considered to be among the least developed protected areas in the country.
Formally established as a national park in 2021, the South Australian government advises visitors to explore the vast protected desert landscape in four-wheel drive vehicles only. Visitors are also required to fix “high-visibility safety flags” to their vehicles to make it easier for emergency responders to find them.
The park is massive, approximately four times larger than Yellowstone National Park in the United States. A 2022 management plan for the park notes that Munga-Thirri—Simpson Desert National Park boasts “the world’s largest system of parallel sand dunes” and “fossil sites of extinct megafauna that once roamed the area.”
Once the torching summer heat is over, visitors to the huge park can return to enjoy “one of the greatest four-wheel drive trips in the world and a true Australian Outback experience,” NPWS says.
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Park Info
Park Name:
Munga-Thirri—Simpson Desert National Park
Location:
Australia
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