Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 30, 2012

Muckaty Station is a 2,380-square-kilometre (590,000-acre) Aboriginal freehold landholding in Australia's Northern Territory, approximately 800 kilometres (500 mi) south of Darwin. Originally under traditional Indigenous Australian ownership, the area became a pastoral lease in the late 19th century and for many years operated as a cattle station. Muckaty Station was returned to its Indigenous custodians in 1999. It is traversed by the Stuart Highway, built in the 1940s along the route of the service track for the Australian Overland Telegraph Line, a natural gas pipeline, and the Adelaide–Darwin railway. The area comprises semi-arid stony ridges, claypans and a stony plateau, and experiences a sub-tropical climate, with a wet season between January and March. The vegetation is mostly scrubland, including spinifex grasslands. The fauna is generally typical of Australian desert environments, and includes the red kangaroo (pictured), the eastern wallaroo, the northern nail-tail wallaby, and the spinifex hopping mouse. A site within Muckaty is being considered for Australia's low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste storage and disposal facility. The plan is subject to a Federal Court challenge due to be heard early in 2013. (Full article...)