The Interior Lowlands are dominated by three major basins, the Carpentaria Basin, the Eyre Basin, and the Murray Basin. The Carpentaria and Eyre basins are separated by such minute residual relief elements as Mount Brown and Mount Fort Bowen in northwestern Queensland. The Wilcannia threshold divides the Eyre and Murray basins, and the latter is separated from the Otway Basin and the Southern Ocean by the Padthaway Ridge. The Eyre and Murray basins are entirely terrestrial, but the Carpentaria is partly inundated by the sea.

The Carpentaria plains, occupying the basin of the same name, form a narrow lowland corridor between the Isa Highlands and the Einasleigh uplands (part of the Eastern Uplands). They are drained by the Leichhardt, Flinders, and Gilbert rivers and in the south take the form of broadly rolling plains underlain by heavy gray lime-enriched (pedocalic) soils. In the north, however, there are extensive flat depositional plains, some of them related to swamps from the Pleistocene Epoch (i.e., about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago), some associated with the present floodplains of the braided river systems. Standing above the plains, for example around Normanton, are considerable plateau and mesa remnants of the Paleogene and Neogene laterite surface.

Similar rolling plains with laterite residuals standing above them occur in the Eyre Basin, particularly around the headwaters of the Diamantina, near Kynuna. But to the south, toward the more arid interior, the plains become flatter and are protected by a veneer of stones—the well-known stony desert with its mantle of gibber (hammada, serir, and desert armour). In many parts of southwestern Queensland, northeastern South Australia, and northwestern New South Wales, there are plateau and related relief remnants similar to those found in other parts of the lowlands, although those are capped and protected not by laterite but by silcrete, another hard rock residue. That region is folded in places, and the subsequent dissection by erosive forces has brought about disintegration of the silcrete, which is about 20 million years old and which formerly extended over vast areas of central Australia. That process provided much stony debris for the gibber plains so characteristic of much of central Australia and particularly of the Lake Eyre depression.

The catchment area of Lake Eyre extends over some 500,000 square miles (1,295,000 square km) of central and northern Australia. It occupies the lowest point of the Australian continent (about 50 feet [15 metres] below sea level), and many large river systems drain into it. The rivers drain the driest part of the continent. But no desert is rainless, and floodwaters entirely cover the bed of Lake Eyre about twice each century, the waters deriving not only from central Australia but also from the higher-rainfall areas drained by the headwaters of the Georgina, Diamantina, Thomson, Barcoo, and similar rivers. It is now clear that, during the late Pleistocene, the precipitation of central Australia was heavier than it is now. The interior drainage basin has received vast quantities of sediment and salt by those rivers, past and present. That has provided ample source material for the Simpson Desert dunes, and many of the normally dry lake beds, including all the large ones, are encrusted with salt. Most of the largest salinas, or salt pans (Eyre, Frome, Torrens, Gregory, and Blanche), are, at least in part, of structural origin, having been formed by downfaulted blocks. Torrens and Gregory are surfaced mainly by gypsum, but the remainder carry a crust of sodium chloride, common salt. Around the major salinas there are extensive alluvial plains.

Under the prevailing arid conditions, fine dust is winnowed from the surface sediments and can be carried high into the air in dust storms. Some is carried long distances, even reaching New Zealand from time to time. The sand of the alluvium is molded into dune ridges.

Sand dunes also occupy large areas of the Murray River basin. They are, by contrast, fixed (or “fossil”) dunes, which developed at some time in the recent past and have since been stabilized by higher precipitation conditions. The eastern part of the basin, near the foothills of the Eastern Uplands, shows evidence of those former higher precipitation amounts in the numerous abandoned river channels of the Riverina. But the western Murray plains are a stony as well as a climatic desert. The plains are underlain by limestones of Miocene age (those about 23 to 5.3 million years old) and, in many areas, by calcrete, a calcareous soil accumulation. Instances of water-dissolved sinkholes and enclosed depressions can be found, and there is a lack of surface drainage characteristic of that type of topography. Only the Murray River, which originates outside the area in a different environment, crosses the basin, flowing in a narrow trench in its lower reaches.

In the east of that region there are extensive alluvial plains associated with major tributaries of the Murray. One feature of interest is the diversion of the Murray, near Echuca, by a rising structural block bounded by fault zones and known as the Cadell Fault Block.

The Eastern Uplands

The Eastern Uplands are a complex series of high ridges, high plains, plateaus, and basins that extend from Cape York Peninsula in the north to Bass Strait in the south, with a southerly extension into Tasmania and one extending westward into western Victoria. The uplands are the eroded remnants of an ancient mountain range recently rejuvenated by block faulting. They occupy the site of the Tasman downwarp belt, the sediments of which were folded and faulted in late Paleozoic times. Granite batholiths were intruded into that region, and during the Cenozoic Era (the past 66 million years)lavas appeared extensively in areas as far apart as northern Queensland and Tasmania. Characteristic features associated with that process were lava fields, with stony rises, soil-filled depressions, and lava caves. Extinct cones and craters survive in southeastern Queensland, in the Monaro district of New South Wales, and in western Victoria.

In considerable measure the landforms reflect the various geologic events. Uplifted structural blocks, many of them trending north to south, are common in some areas, while straight river courses reflect the control exercised by fault zones. Ridge and valley forms, as found in the Grampians of Victoria, reflect the differential erosion of broken and folded rock strata. Massive domes or clusters of boulders are common on the exposed granitic batholiths. The lava plains and plateaus display stony rises, shallow alluvial depressions, and volcanic vents and plugs of various types and ages.

Other features reflect the erosional history of the region. Wide areas of the upland had been reduced to a uniform low relief by the time of the later Mesozoic Era (about 100 million years ago) and many remnants of the ancient surface, exhumed by erosive action from beneath a later Cretaceous cover (i.e., up to about 65 million years ago), survive in the landscape, notably in northern Queensland. The Cenozoic leaching of rocks by weathering in humid climates—which forms iron-rich residuals (laterization)—also affected the uplands, from northern Queensland to Tasmania.

Lastly, during the Pleistocene, small glaciers developed in the Mount Kosciuszko area of New South Wales and the central plateau of Tasmania. Small, ice-scoured hollows and small moraines (ridges of glacial debris) attest to those events, while over rather wider areas frost-shattered rocks that subsequently caused soils to flow down-slope (solifluction) have helped shape the surface. No snow normally survives through summer in either of those areas now, but in winter the snowfields of the Mount Kosciuszko area alone are more extensive than those of all Switzerland, if far less heavily supplied.

The Great Barrier Reef is related in important respects to the Eastern Uplands. Lying off the Queensland coast, that great system of coral reefs and atolls owes its origin to a combination of continental drift (into warmer waters), rifting, sea-level change, and subsidence.

The human impact

In the context of such extraordinary environmental time frames, neither the Aboriginal peoples nor the European settlers can be described as long-term residents, yet in their brief time they have already modified the landscape considerably and in most ways deleteriously. The Europeans in particular have been responsible for initially minor, but later significant and widespread, changes, notably considerable soil erosion. Clearing vegetation for agricultural purposes, overgrazing, introducing exotic plants and animals, making tracks and roads, even clearing stones from paddocks—all have rendered the land surface more susceptible to soil erosion. Humans have set in train their own great cycle of erosion, similar to that which beset many parts of western Europe in the 18th century and which has assailed many parts of the American West since the late 19th century.