This is the world's biggest expanse of salt and in some areas the salt crust is 50cm thick and solid enough to support a truck.

The lake has a very important role in the centre's ecology. Rainfall in Australia's centre is totally erratic: some areas may not see rain for years, but when it does rain it can bucket down. This is when much of the desert floods and instead of flowing to the sea the normally dry rivers flow to the lowest point of Australia, Lake Eyre.

The small Lake Eyre dragon makes its home amongst the cracks in the salt. Here it shelters from the sun and when it's too hot, or too cool, it digs deeper down into the moist mud. Special eyelashes cut out some glare from the sun and white salt.

This dragon likes it hot. While most lizards are up with the sun, the Lake Eyre dragon doesn't stir until mid morning when it's really warm. It mainly feeds on tiny harvester ants that nest in the salt and survive on seeds and dead insects blown on to the lake.

Surprisingly, Lake Eyre and the rivers that fill it are teeming with fish and crustaceans that whose populations explode during the flood. They become easy pickings for adult pelicans who feed cooperatively, herding fish into the shallows and dipping their bills simultaneously to trap fish.

Pelicans hatch bald and pink and a parent is always at the nest to shelter them from the hot sun. When the chicks can walk they leave the nest to gather in crèches for about 100 days until they can fly. No one knows why pelicans fly up to 1,500km to breed on Lake Eyre but it appears an ideal place.