Goongarrie National Park is a national park in

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

, east of

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

and about north of

Kalgoorlie Kalgoorlie is a city in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, located east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. It is sometimes referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder, as the surrounding urban area includ ...

. The park was part of Goongarrie

Station Station may refer to: Agriculture * Station (Australian agriculture), a large Australian landholding used for livestock production * Station (New Zealand agriculture), a large New Zealand farm used for grazing by sheep and cattle ** Cattle statio ...

that was purchased by the

state government A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonomy, or ...

in 1995. The area also includes the abandoned townsite of Goongarrie. The name comes from nearby Lake Gongarrie which is

Indigenous Australian Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

in origin and of unknown meaning. Infrastructure in the park was upgraded in 2007 after it received $70,000 in funding from the government. The park is dominated by

arid A region is arid when it severely lacks available water, to the extent of hindering or preventing the growth and development of plant and animal life. Regions with arid climates tend to lack vegetation and are called xeric or desertic. Most ar ...

zone woodlands and is situated along the

mulga-eucalypt line The mulga-eucalypt line, or mulga-eucalypt boundary line, marks a boundary between '' Acacia''-dominated shrublands and ''Eucalyptus''-dominated open woodlands across Western Australia. It runs across the north of the Eastern Goldfields, and throu ...

. Species of

acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as the wattles or acacias, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa and Australasia. The genus na ...

and

eucalypt Eucalypt is a descriptive name for woody plants with capsule fruiting bodies belonging to seven closely related genera (of the tribe Eucalypteae) found across Australasia: ''Eucalyptus'', '' Corymbia'', '' Angophora'', ''Stockwellia'', ''Allosyn ...

make up the bulk of the vegetation. The southern end of

Lake Marmion A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...

can be found at the northern end of the park along with many smaller

salt lake A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per litre). ...

s and clay pans. Goongarrie is the transition area between the Coolgardie and Murchison

bioregions A bioregion is an ecology, ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to ...

References

{{authority control National parks of Western Australia Protected areas established in 1978 Goldfields-Esperance Coolgardie woodlands Western Australian mulga shrublands

See also

References