Why is Australia so overwhelmingly dry when nearby places like Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Indonesia, and Tasmania are all so wet and lush?
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Not sure if anyone mentioned this yet but another thing I haven’t heard many people discussing is the high oil content of a lot of Australia’s natural flora, especially Eucalyptus trees.
In California, due to long-term droughts, a lot of old/tall Eucalyptus trees were removed in the recent decade. Eucalyptus are not native there, they are native to Australia, and don’t root well in the California soil. They grow invasively in CA (quickly spread) but without good support (fall over easily, crush things). A lot of us learned these details about how Eucalyptus trees weren’t good for the CA wildlife, ecosystems, etc from this, so to not plant anymore. But more importantly, the leaves and bark of Eucalyptus are very dry already, plus high in oil, and therefore easily flammable. The fallen leaves do not decay very fast, and create a gigantic highly-flammable carpet all around the tree/s. The leaves fall all year, and the oil even hovers in the air as a pungent aroma, which many intentionally inhale for medicinal purposes. California has known for decades the Eucalyptus trees would be bad for the wildfire problems CA already is known for too, so out there you hear about how those specific types of trees should be cut down during droughts.
As you can imagine, large stretches of forest with Eucalyptus or other high-oil trees/shrubs are basically just waiting to explode in flame as soon as temperatures reach that point. And as mentioned above, they are native to Australia.
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