Qualla: Kalamurina Sanctuary

Kalamurina Sanctuary: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

More than 65 percent of every drop of water that ever reaches Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre passes through this single property first. That is the strange, watery secret of Kalamurina, a 6,700-square-kilometre stretch of dunefield and gibber plain in the arid heart of South Australia, where the Warburton and Macumba rivers and Kallakoopah Creek converge on their long, mostly-dry journey toward Australia's lowest point. For most of the year these are channels of sand. But when the inland rains finally come, Kalamurina becomes the floodgate of the desert.

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Kalamurina Sanctuary: The Meeting of the Waters

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kalamurina borders the north shore of Lake Eyre North and contains a vast share of the lake's catchment. Its country is a mosaic of contrasts: red dunefields and stony gibber plains, desert woodlands, freshwater and saline lakes, and the green riparian corridors that follow its t...

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Kalamurina Sanctuary: From Wool to Wilderness

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Long before it was a sanctuary, Kalamurina was a gamble against the climate. A pastoral lease was established here before 1884, first stocked with merino sheep for wool, with camels brought in to haul supplies across the trackless country. Cattle followed by 1889. But the land pu...

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Kalamurina Sanctuary: A Refuge Larger Than a State

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In December 2007 the Australian Wildlife Conservancy bought Kalamurina and retired it from grazing for good, transforming one of Australia's harshest pastoral runs into one of its largest non-government nature reserves. The acquisition did something bigger than the property itsel...

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Kalamurina Sanctuary: Small Lives in a Vast Place

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The creatures Kalamurina protects are easy to overlook and almost impossible to replace. The crest-tailed mulgara, a small carnivorous marsupial once thought lost across much of its range, hunts in the dunes. The kultarr races across open ground on long, delicate legs. The Lake E...

Read more: Kalamurina Sanctuary on Qualla