Enjoy the rich colours of this big dune country with its red sands, ironstone pebbles, grey-green spinifex and clear blue skies. Camp under the stars in Queensland’s largest national park.

At one million hectares, Munga-Thirri National Park is Queensland's largest protected area. At Poeppels Corner the park meets South Australia and the Northern Territory. The entire Simpson Desert covers more than 17 million hectares of Central Australia.

Across the Simpson, parallel dunes rising to 30-40m run south-east to north-west, the dominant wind direction when they formed during the Pleistocene epoch about 80,000 years ago. Spaced about 1km apart, dunes can extend 200km.

Bare windswept crests stand atop slopes secured by spinifex and cane grass. In the easterly and westerly areas of the desert, the flat plains between dunes can be wind-polished gibber pebbles, here at Munga-Thirri the plains are usually shallow sands or mineral encrusted claypans. These plains surprisingly support open shrub lands of acacias, hakeas and grevilleas.