gibber plain

English

Etymology

From gibber (“stone”) + plain.

Pronunciation

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Noun

gibber plain (plural gibber plains)

1. (Australia) A large desert pavement.
   • 1984, Ken Simpson, Nicolas Day, The Birds of Australia: A Book of Identification: 758 Birds in Colour, page 278:

     Gibber plains are often covered with a very open low shrubland (see below).

   • 2009, Richard Macmillen, Barbara Macmillen, Meandering in the Bush, page 19:

     We were to learn also, as we approached Bedourie and Sandringham, that to the east the Simpson Desert is bounded by stony desert or Gibber plain, which interdigitates with the sandhill-claypan country.

   • 2011, Julie E. Laity, 9: Pavements and stone mantles, David S. G. Thomas (editor), Arid Zone Geomorphology: Process, Form and Change in Drylands, unnumbered page,

     Gibber plains vary in character according to local sources of bedrock, with limestone gibbers, for example, adjacent to the northern Flinders Ranges (Twidale, 1994) and silcrete gibbers mantling a deflated surface in the Sturt Stony Desert (Thomas, Clarke and Pain, 2005).

Synonyms

• stony desert, stony mantle