Sturt’s Stony Desert is placed in South Australia. It is covered with a layer of siliceous and glazed stones. The surface of gibber deserts appears hard, but the surface beneath the gibbers is actually soft, and readily turns to mud after rain.

Under these stones there is a conchodial fracture stones. The Aboriginal people used these stones as pre-formed blades for tool making. According to its discoverer Sturt’s account from 1840, there were on every side ‘stupendous and almost unsurmountable sand ridges of a fiery red’. Most of the sand has now been moved from the area, and have been accumulating in depressions between the plateaux that are strewn with gibbers or carried further downwind to lowlands. Burke & Wills wrote of their 1861-62 expedition, between the dunes and near residual rises and uplands, especially those with a silcrete capping, the ground is covered ‘with sharp dark brown stones that were terrible to walk on’.