A week after the uplift from outback New South Wales clouded Sydney in dust, the hot dry winds from central Australia hit central Queensland.
As the low strong winds hit the loose sandy patches in the Desert Uplands around Aramac and Barcaldine, the fine soil uplifted and headed north east for the coast and ultimately, the Great Barrier Reef.
With the ongoing drought, fine dust is easily generated around stock watering and lick points where repetitive bovine hooves have pulverized the red sandy soils.
Also, fresh firebreaks and refresher grades of rutted roads produce plenty of loose dirt that makes for easy uplift.
While the sights of thick dust clouding out vistas of paddocks and the Sydney Harbour Bridge abound, it is important to reflect that this fine dust does add nutrients to the sea, to feed the world’s fish stocks, and is an important part of the evolution of the organisms of the Great Barrier Reef.
It is a soft slow way to fertilise, as opposed to the large, too-rich and too-much that can come from flooded rivers that disgorge that heavy dirty cream load into the Pacific Ocean after cyclones.
Another salient reminder is that high above, swirling airborne dust particles seed ice crystals.
These microscopic crystals are big players in creating rain and lightning, and also heat and cool the planet by bouncing sunlight off clouds.
Hence, this fine dust from dry and dusty environs are important pre-emptors to thunderstorms and rain; and the electrical energy in the storms’ lightning enables atmospheric nitrogen to be converted to a solid form that plants can absorb, as it falls onto earth with the rain.
(This is the reason your lawn is always so much greener after thunderstorm rain than when you water it from a tap/sprinkler.)
So as we lament the dust and the mess it makes of our homesteads, we know that this is how the big interior is fertilised.
So wipe away, sweep, vacuum and wait for rain.
– Robyn Adams, Desert Uplands member
