Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Cooper Creek Floodplain

There are a wide range of wetland habitats scattered throughout the floodplain of Cooper Creek. Peripherally, there are usually dry, saltpans (salinas) and claypans of heavy clay soils. For much of the time these pans are dry, with a network of cracks separating the blocks of curling mud. After rain they are covered with ephemeral herbs.

There are Coolibah fringed billabongs, secondary channels, that receive water when the main stream of Cooper Creek rises in times of flood. Billabongs also drain water from the floodplain into the Cooper.

There are also semi-permanent waterholes in the main channel of the Cooper, and the sand dune-lined Coongie Lakes. There are stands of River Redgums around the Coongie Lakes Complex. If the Cooper stops flowing for 9 months or more these more permanent water holes, and even the lakes, dry out.

see Aquatic Food Webs in Turbid Arid-Zone Rivers

Sources & Further reading

Penny Van Oosterzee, 1993, The Centre - The Natural history of Australia's Desert Regions, Reed Australia.

• Aquatic Food Webs in Turbid Arid-Zone Rivers
• Biological Duricrust
• Chenopod Shrublands
• Claypans
• Cooper Creek Floodplain
• Ecosystems
• Mound Springs
• Mulga Woodland
• Salinas
• Saltbush
• Spinifex Grasslands