Yes, a big country is bound to offer a broad diversity in climates and disasters!
The question of the dry lakes... the biggest is Lake Eyre, which is right in central Australia in the northern part of the state of South Australia.
There's an awful lot of water rolling on down towards Lake Eyre. The floods in the north of Queensland will ripple on out through the farming areas and towns and head for Cooper's Creek, which eventually runs into Lake Eyre. This salt lake is below sea level, so it goes no further than that.
Lake Gairdner, where the regular speed trials are held, is further south in South Australia and probably relatively unaffected. If you google it, you can look at pics of when it flooded in 2006, which relies on relatively local rainfall because it doesn't get input from any of the catchments in the eastern states.
As for my lack of presence lately, I've been a bit hung up on things. One thing I'm trying to do is get a Hemi 6 engine project underway, and I'm also trying my hand at patternmaking to produce an adaptor to fit up the Hemi 6 to the A833 gearbox.
