This scorched landscape stretches all the way to Lake Eyre, a salt lake covering around 5800 square kilometers with an annual rainfall of less than 125 millimeters. Surrounded by the Tirari Desert, the area has remained largely immune to the taming of influence of fences, roads and homesteads. Travellers through the ages have found it an unsettling environment. The explorer Cecil Madigan wrote in 1940: (see above)