The Gawler Ranges are a range of stoney hills in

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 ...

to the north of

Eyre Peninsula The Eyre Peninsula is a triangular peninsula in South Australia. It is bounded by the Spencer Gulf on the east, the Great Australian Bight on the west, and the Gawler Ranges to the north. Originally called Eyre’s Peninsula, it was named aft ...

. The

Eyre Highway Eyre Highway is a highway linking Western Australia and South Australia via the Nullarbor Plain. Signed as National Highways 1 and A1, it forms part of Highway 1 and the Australian National Highway network linking Perth and Adelaide. It ...

skirts the south of the ranges. The

Gawler Ranges National Park Gawler Ranges National Park is a protected area lying north-west of Adelaide in the northern Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. It is known for its spectacular rock formations. History The national park originated as the Paney Station pas ...

is in the ranges north of Kimba and

Wudinna Wudinna is a town in South Australia. The area was first settled by Europeans in 1861 when Robert George Standley lodged a claim for of land surrounding Weedna Hill ('weedna' later became changed to Wudinna which may be an Aboriginal word meanin ...

. The ranges are covered by the Gawler Ranges Native Title Claim.

History

The

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights ...

of the Gawler Ranges are the

Barngarla The Barngarla, formerly known as Parnkalla and also known as Pangkala, are an Aboriginal people of the Port Lincoln, Whyalla and Port Augusta areas. The Barngarla are the traditional owners of much of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. Languag ...

Kokatha The Kokatha, also known as the Kokatha Mula, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of South Australia. They speak the Kokatha language, close to or a dialect of the Western Desert language. Country Traditional Kokatha lands extend ov ...

and

Wirangu people The Wirangu are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Western coastal region of South Australia. Name Daisy Bates stated that the Wirangu ethnonym was composed of two words: ''wira'' (cloud) and ''wonga'' (speech). Language Wirangu is usual ...

s, who have inhabited the area for at least 30,000 years and are now known collectively as the Gawler Ranges Aboriginal People. These

Aboriginal peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

maintained and used

rock hole A panhole is a depression or basin eroded into flat or gently sloping cohesive rock.Twidale, C.R., and Bourne, J.A., 2018''Rock basins (gnammas) revisited. ''Géomorphologie: Relief, Processus, Environnement, Articles sous presse, Varia, mis en l ...

s in the

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

rock formations as a water source. The ranges were named by

Edward John Eyre Edward John Eyre (5 August 181530 November 1901) was an English land explorer of the Australian continent, colonial administrator, and Governor of Jamaica. Early life Eyre was born in Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, shortly before his family moved to ...

after the

Governor of South Australia The governor of South Australia is the representative in South Australia of the Monarch of Australia, currently King Charles III. The governor performs the same constitutional and ceremonial functions at the state level as does the governor-gene ...

George Gawler Lieutenant-Colonel George Gawler, KH, (21 July 1795 – 7 May 1869) was the second Governor of South Australia, at the same time serving as Resident Commissioner, from 17 October 1838 until 15 May 1841. Biography Early life Gawler, born on 2 ...

in 1839. This was on one of Eyre's earlier expeditions before his famous crossing of the

Nullarbor Plain The Nullarbor Plain ( ; Latin: feminine of , 'no', and , 'tree') is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its ...

further west. It was on this expedition that Edward John Eyre made the first recorded sighting of South Australia's floral emblem, the Sturt desert pea, in 1839 during an early exploration of the region. Stephen Hack explored the range in 1856 and in 1857 the first

pastoral lease A pastoral lease, sometimes called a pastoral run, is an arrangement used in both Australia and New Zealand where government-owned Crown land is leased out to graziers for the purpose of livestock grazing on rangelands. Australia Pastoral lease ...

was taken up in the area,

Yardea Yardea Station is a pastoral lease in the Australian state of South Australia that operates as a sheep station, now within the Gawler Ranges National Park. Paney Station became part of Yardea Station in 1904. It is situated approximately nor ...

, which was set up on the site of a former Aboriginal camp and included a

freshwater spring A spring is a point of exit at which groundwater from an aquifer flows out on top of Earth's crust (pedosphere) and becomes surface water. It is a component of the hydrosphere. Springs have long been important for humans as a source of fres ...

later used as the station's water source. More

sheep station A sheep station is a large property ( station, the equivalent of a ranch) in Australia or New Zealand, whose main activity is the raising of sheep for their wool and/or meat. In Australia, sheep stations are usually in the south-east or sout ...

s were soon established, including

Hiltaba Hiltaba Nature Reserve is located in the north of the Eyre Peninsula on the western edge of the Gawler Ranges, South Australia. It is situated on a former pastoral lease known as Hiltaba, or Hiltaba Station, that had operated as a sheep stati ...

and

Paney Station Yardea Station is a pastoral lease in the Australian state of South Australia that operates as a sheep station, now within the Gawler Ranges National Park. Paney Station became part of Yardea Station in 1904. It is situated approximately nort ...

. Two good seasons followed in 1857 and 1858, with pastoralists reporting permanent freshwater lakes on their runs. Stations were required to stock 50 sheep per square mile (19 per square kilometre) but soon properties such as

Nonning Nonning or Nonning Station is both a pastoral lease and a formal bounded locality in South Australia. The property operates as a sheep station; the name and boundaries of the formal locality were created on 26 April 2013 for the long establishe ...

were shearing flocks of 90,000. The first mail service from Port Augusta to Yardea commenced in 1876, with the telegraph service to Western Australia that passes through the range commencing in 1903

Geology

The rocks within the ranges were formed by volcanic activity between ~1595-1592 Ma, when the

Gawler Range Volcanics The Gawler Craton covers approximately 440,000 square kilometres of central South Australia. Its Precambrian crystalline basement crustal block was cratonised ca. 1550–1450 Ma. Prior to 1550 Ma the craton comprised a number of active Prot ...

(GRV) were erupted. Approximately 30 000 km³ of dominantly

rhyolitic Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral ...

and

dacitic Dacite () is a volcanic rock formed by rapid solidification of lava that is high in silica and low in alkali metal oxides. It has a fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic texture and is intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyol ...

lava Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a fracture in the crust, on land or un ...

were rapidly extruded, and their eroded remnants preserve one of the most voluminous felsic magmatic events preserved on earth.

Basaltic Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90% of a ...

and basaltic-

andesite Andesite () is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predomi ...

comprise a remarkably minor component of the magmatism (<1%). The Gawler Ranges Volcanics were also erupted at remarkably high temperatures (~950-1100 °C) for felsic magmas, and this, coupled with their very high

halogen The halogens () are a group in the periodic table consisting of five or six chemically related elements: fluorine (F), chlorine (Cl), bromine (Br), iodine (I), astatine (At), and tennessine (Ts). In the modern IUPAC nomenclature, this group is ...

(particularly F and Cl) compositions resulted in low viscosity (runny) magmas when compared to typical rhyolites and dacites which are generally several hundred degrees cooler. This low

viscosity The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of "thickness": for example, syrup has a higher viscosity than water. Viscosity quantifies the inte ...

resulted in emplacement as a series of lobate flows with a stacked pancake-like morphology which cooled rapidly resulting in porphyritic textures and widespread

columnar jointing Columnar jointing is a geological structure where sets of intersecting closely spaced fractures, referred to as Joint (geology), joints, result in the formation of a regular array of polygonal Prism (geometry), prisms, or columns. Columnar joint ...

. The ranges are a small part of the

Gawler Craton The Gawler Craton covers approximately 440,000 square kilometres of central South Australia. Its Precambrian crystalline basement crustal block was cratonised ca. 1550–1450 Ma. Prior to 1550 Ma the craton comprised a number of active Proter ...

which is a

craton A craton (, , or ; from grc-gre, κράτος "strength") is an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere, which consists of Earth's two topmost layers, the crust and the uppermost mantle. Having often survived cycles of merging and ...

rich in mineral resources, although many are only recently discovered and not yet fully exploited. There is much

pink granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergr ...

in some areas, including on the

Hiltaba Nature Reserve Hiltaba Nature Reserve is located in the north of the Eyre Peninsula on the western edge of the Gawler Ranges, South Australia. It is situated on a former pastoral lease known as Hiltaba, or Hiltaba Station, that had operated as a sheep stati ...

on the western side of the ranges, which is located on

Hiltaba Suite The Gawler Craton covers approximately 440,000 square kilometres of central South Australia. Its Precambrian crystalline basement crustal block was cratonised ca. 1550–1450 Ma. Prior to 1550 Ma the craton comprised a number of active Prot ...

granite. At approximately 580Ma the Gawler Ranges were impacted by a large

meteorite A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the ...

which excavated the Acraman impact crater, in which the modern Lake Acraman now sits. The original crater was possibly as large as 90 km in diameter and flung fist-sized debris several hundred kilometres to the east, where it has been preserved in sediments which now comprise the

Flinders Ranges The Flinders Ranges are the largest mountain range in South Australia, which starts about north of Adelaide. The ranges stretch for over from Port Pirie to Lake Callabonna. The Adnyamathanha people are the Aboriginal group who have inhabi ...

Geomorphology

The highest point is Nukey Bluff at above sea level.

Bornhardt A bornhardt () is a dome-shaped, steep-sided, bald rock outcropping at least in height and several hundred metres in width. They are named after Wilhelm Bornhardt (1864–1946), a German geologist and explorer of German East Africa, who first ...

s dominate the landscape. Soils are invariably dominated by the weathering products of the volcanics, and are typically red in colour due to abundant oxidised iron weathering in the arid environment. No major rivers drain the ranges, however several internal catchments feed the modern playa lakes Gairdner, Acraman, Everard, McFarlane, Harry and Island Lagoon.

Flora and fauna

Birds

There are some 140 species of birds in the Gawler Ranges, including the

emu The emu () (''Dromaius novaehollandiae'') is the second-tallest living bird after its ratite relative the ostrich. It is endemic to Australia where it is the largest native bird and the only extant member of the genus ''Dromaius''. The emu' ...

wedge-tailed eagle The wedge-tailed eagle (''Aquila audax'') is the largest bird of prey in the continent of Australia. It is also found in southern New Guinea to the north and is distributed as far south as the state of Tasmania. Adults of this species have lon ...

Major Mitchell's cockatoo Major Mitchell's cockatoo (''Lophochroa leadbeateri''), also known as Leadbeater's cockatoo or the pink cockatoo, is a medium-sized cockatoo that inhabits arid and semi-arid inland areas of Australia, though it is seen regularly in other climat ...

and

singing honeyeater The singing honeyeater (''Gavicalis virescens'') is a small bird found in Australia, and is part of the honeyeater family Meliphagidae. The bird lives in a wide range of shrubland, woodland, and coastal habitat. It is relatively common and is wi ...

Mammals

The Gawler Ranges are home to several larger mammals, like the

southern hairy-nosed wombat The southern hairy-nosed wombat (''Lasiorhinus latifrons'') is one of three extant species of wombats. It is found in scattered areas of semiarid scrub and mallee from the eastern Nullarbor Plain to the New South Wales border area. It is the s ...

and the endangered

yellow-footed rock wallaby The yellow-footed rock-wallaby (''Petrogale xanthopus''), formerly known as the ring-tailed rock-wallaby, is a member of the macropod family (the marsupial family that includes the kangaroos, wallabies, tree-kangaroos, and wallaroos). Descripti ...

.Informationsbroschüre des Parkverwaltung, engl., pdf

Nature reserve

The

, owned by

Nature Foundation Nature Foundation, formerly The National Parks Foundation and Nature Foundation SA Inc. (NFSA), is the largest non-government nature conservation organisation based in South Australia. It was founded in October 1981, and is supported by the Go ...

, abuts the Gawler Ranges National Park to the north, and works to protect many

threatened species Threatened species are any species (including animals, plants and fungi) which are vulnerable to endangerment in the near future. Species that are threatened are sometimes characterised by the population dynamics measure of ''critical depensa ...

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licence.