name from Allen Simpson, a geographer who ventured into this desert in 1845. The name was suggested by explorer and geologist Cecil Madigan. In 1936, Edmund Colson became the first white man to cross the Simpson Desert. Before that, the great Australian explorers Charles Sturt and David Lindsay had failed. While the early explorers used horses to cross the Outback, the first woman to make the journey riding a horse was Anna Hingley, who rode from Broome to Cairns in 2006. The nuclear weapons trials carried out by the United Kingdom at Maralinga and Emu Field in the 1950s and early 1960s have left areas contaminated with plutonium-239 and other radioactive material. Regions A large contiguous desert area is formed by the Tanami, Greater Sands, Lesser Sands, Gibson and Greater Victoria Sands in western Australia and a smaller one by the Simpson, Sturt, Strzelecki and Tirari Deserts in the east. Spatially isolated between Great Victoria Sand and Simpson lies the small Pedirka Desert, which spreads out over the geological Pedirka Sedimentary Basin. The Small Sandy Desert connects to the Great Sandy Desert and is similar in terms of landscape and vegetation. The Western Desert, which describes a cultural region of Australia's indigenous people, includes the Gibson, Great Victoria, Great Sand and Small Sand deserts in the states of Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. Most of the inhabitants of the area are Indigenous Australians. There are other areas in Australia designated as desert that are not related to the Australian deserts mentioned above. On Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia is an area of ​​two square kilometers called the Little Sahara, a formation of several sand dunes on its south coast. In Victoria, about 375 km west of Melbourne, there is still the Little Desert National Park. The Painted Desert is 121 kilometers northwest of Coober Pedy in South Australia. The almost treeless Nullarbor Plains in southern Australia, made of limestone, are also known as the Nullarbor Desert. Geography There are four known types of terrestrial deserts: continental (or remote) deserts tropical (or zonal) deserts shelter deserts coastal deserts Australian deserts generally meet the first three criteria, although some coastal desert areas exist in Western Australia. The great ocean circulation in the south of the continent and the cold sea currents in the southern zone play the fourth crucial role, indirectly at the origin of the long