science

Lake Callabonna

Lake Callabonna is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lake Callabonna rather than just read about it. In short: Lake Callabonna is a dry salt lake with little to no vegetation in the Far North region of South Australia. The 160-square-kilometre (62 sq mi) lake is situated approximately 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Cameron Corner, the junction of South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales.

Key takeaways

Lake Callabonna belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lake Callabonna to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lake Callabonna from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lake Callabonna is a dry salt lake with little to no vegetation in the Far North region of South Australia. The 160-square-kilometre (62 sq mi) lake is situated approximately 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Cameron Corner, the junction of South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. It is also known as Lake Mulligan. The lake is an important site for late Pleistocene fossils. It is within the extent of the Strzelecki Desert Lakes Important Bird Area, which is important for waterbirds when holding water in the aftermath of floods.

History The first pastoralists in the area were the Ragless brothers in 1881, who moved there from the northern Flinders Ranges, opening a sheep-run. The station owner in 1892, F. B. Ragless, was shown a number of giant fossilised skeletons embedded in the dry surface of the lake, discovered two days before by an Aboriginal station hand named Jackie Nolan. The South Australian Museum sent a worker, H. Hurst, to investigate the site. Four months later the results were delivered to the museum. After examination of the fossilised skeletons an expedition funded by Sir Thomas Elder and E. C. Stirling, director of the South Australian Museum, was organised, and Hurst led the team back to the site. After several visits, Stirling and A. H. C. Zietz collected a large number of diprotodon and dromornithidae fossilised skeletons. The area was designated a Fossil Reserve in 1901. Access is restricted.

Location and geography Lake Callabonna is a salt lake situated approximately 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Cameron Corner, the junction of South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. It is also known as Lake Mulligan. It covers around 160 square kilometres (62 sq mi). Hamilton Creek, an intermittent creek starting high in the Mawson Plateau, occasionally flows into the lake, after first deviating north-east to Moolawatana Station, before swinging south-east.

Protected area status The lake is a protected area.

Strzelecki Regional Reserve The northern end of Lake Callabonna is within the boundary of the Strzelecki Regional Reserve.

Lake Callabonna Fossil Reserve Lake Callabonna is the location of a site where the articulated skeletons of Diprotodon, an extinct genus of marsupial, were found in the late 19th century by the South Australian Museum. The site is considered to have a very high palaeontological significance. A fossil reserve was dedicated in 1901 under state law, which is in force, as the Crown Lands Act 1929. Administrative responsibility lies with the South Australian Museum. The lake was listed on the South Australian Heritage Register in February 1997, for its palaeontological significance. In 2002, the museum pointed out that the lake received "negligible management effort as a Fossil Reserve under the Crown Lands Act 1929", and that proclamation under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972 may provide a higher level of protection against "degradation arising from uncontrolled access".

Birds The lake lies is within the extent of the Strzelecki Desert Lakes Important Bird Area, identified as such by BirdLife International because of its importance for waterbirds when holding water in the aftermath of floods.

See also Genyornis newtoni, a species of large flightless bird which lived at Lake Callabonna General:

List of lakes of Australia § South Australia List of fossil parks

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lake Callabonna

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lake Callabonna claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lake Callabonna before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lake Callabonna ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lake Callabonna

In research: Lake Callabonna appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lake Callabonna in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lake Callabonna is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Far North (South Australia), Fossil parks in Australia, Pleistocene paleontological sites of Australia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lake Callabonna outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lake Callabonna in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lake Callabonna means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lake Callabonna out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lake Callabonna in simple terms?

Why does Lake Callabonna matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lake Callabonna?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lake Callabonna.