The Birksgate Range is a scattered range of mountains in the northwest of

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. It is located on the northeastern edges of the

Great Victoria Desert The Great Victoria Desert is a sparsely populated desert ecoregion and interim Australian bioregion in Western Australia and South Australia. History In 1875, British-born Australian explorer Ernest Giles became the first European to cross th ...

, spreading for about from Iltur in the southeast to

Watarru Watarru Community is an Aboriginal community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands in South Australia (one of a number of communities or homelands on "The Lands"; others include Amata, Ernabella/ Pukatja, Fregon/ Kaltjiti, ...

in the northwest. The northern portion of it is located within the

Watarru Indigenous Protected Area The Watarru Indigenous Protected Area is an Indigenous Protected Area in the north west corner of South Australia. It covers an area of in the Great Victoria Desert. It is the traditional land of the Pitjantjatjara people, Pitjantjatjara, Ngaa ...

. The range consists of scattered protrusions of

granitic A granitoid is a generic term for a diverse category of coarse-grained igneous rocks that consist predominantly of quartz, plagioclase, and alkali feldspar. Granitoids range from plagioclase-rich tonalites to alkali-rich syenites and from quart ...

rock that have been weathered into rounded and rugged hills. They are not visibly connected to each other, with each outcrop being separated by flat expanses of plains and sand dunes. The mountains are fairly low in elevation; they are highest at the northern end. The most prominent peaks in the range are Mounts Lindsay () and Wooltarlinna, at the northeastern end of the range, near Watarru. Further southwest are Mounts Holder and Sir Thomas (). From here the range spreads southeast along the edge of the desert, and the hills generally become lower and more widely dispersed. Mount Poondinna () is the highest peak in the central part of the range. Mounts Cheesman and Yaroona (also spelled Yaruna) are further to the southeast. The southern end of the range is at Iltur (Coffin Hill). The Birksgate Range was named by the explorer David Lindsay, who led the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition across the Great Victoria Desert between April 1891 and March 1892. He named the range for the man who funded and equipped their expedition, Sir

Thomas Elder Sir Thomas Elder, (5 August 1818 – 6 March 1897), was a Scottish-Australian pastoralist, highly successful businessman, philanthropist, politician, race-horse owner and breeder, and public figure. Amongst many other things, he is notable fo ...

. "Birksgate" was the name of Elder's house in

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book, title=Journal of the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition, 1891–2, author=David Lindsay, author2=Thomas Elder, author3=L. A. Wells, publisher=C. E. Bristow, Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, location=Adelaide, year=1893, page=51 {{cite news, title=The Elder Expedition: Mapping out the interior, url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3045553, newspaper=The West Australian, location=Perth, date=23 February 1893, page=2, publisher=Charles Harper, West Australian Newspaper Company, Ltd Mountain ranges of South Australia Far North (South Australia)