Lake Newland Conservation Park is a protected area in the Australian state 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 ...

located on the west coast of the

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 af ...

about north of the town of Elliston. It was proclaimed in 1991 in order to protect Lake Newland, a hypersaline lake, and an associated

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The p ...

complex. It lies in the traditional lands of the

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 ...

History and description

The conservation park is located within the gazetted localities (from south to north) of Elliston, Colton, and Talia. It stretches along a coastal strip, and includes the large sand dunes which lie between the lake and the sea. Land within the conservation park has a relatively recent geological history, with

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...

sand dunes creating a barrier between the

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-small ...

and a depression in the Bridgewater Formation of

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

limestone that is common throughout the western Eyre Peninsula. 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 right ...

of the land, an Aboriginal people of the west coast of South Australia known as the Wirangu, were forced off their land in the 1800s as European settlers moved into the area and started farming the area inland of the lake, blocking their access to the lake, dunes and sea. After the Elliston massacre in May 1849 at Waterloo Bay, the whole area became

taboo A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...

to Aboriginal people, and they did not set foot in it until 2018, when a cleansing ceremony was performed. Lake Newland was 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 t ...

for his friend and travelling companion Richard Francis Newland, during his Eyre's 1839 expeditions to the west. The conservation park was proclaimed in 1991 (named after the lake), with some additional land being added in 1996. It is classified as an IUCN Category Ia protected area. The dunes continue to encroach on the lake, lagoons and other wetlands in the park, which are also fed by

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 ...

s in the

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

. Average annual rainfall (recorded at Elliston) is .

Vegetation

The conservation park contains mobile sand dunes and sub-coastal wetlands. The vegetation includes areas of previously cleared land with patches of regenerating drooping sheoak

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (se ...

and scattered native shrubs. The lake margins are dominated by salt-tolerant ''

Sarcocornia ''Sarcocornia'' is a formerly recognized genus of flowering plants in the amaranth family, Amaranthaceae. Species are known commonly as samphires, glassworts, or saltworts. Molecular phylogenetic studies have shown that when separated from ''Salic ...

'' and ''

Tecticornia ''Tecticornia'' is a genus of succulent, salt tolerant plants largely endemic to Australia. Taxa in the genus are commonly referred to as samphires. In 2007, the genus ''Halosarcia'', along with three other Australian genera (''Pachycornia'', ...

'' species. The coastal shrublands that cover much of the reserve are mainly composed of coastal daisybush, with coast beard-heath, seaberry saltbush, long-pod wattle, coastal umbrella bush and cockies tongues. The foredunes behind the beach contain ''Spinifex hirsutus'' grassland as well as coast saltbush and knobby club-rush.

Swale Swale or Swales may refer to: Topography * Swale (landform), a low tract of land ** Bioswale, landform designed to remove silt and pollution ** Swales, found in the formation of Hummocky cross-stratification Geography * River Swale, in North ...

s are characterised by swamp paperbarks and dryland tea-trees over salt-tolerant shrubs.

Other designations

The full extent of the conservation park is overlapped by an Important Bird Area (IBA) known as the Lake Newland Important Bird Area. The IBA which is a non-statutory arrangement has been identified by BirdLife International because it regularly supports over 1% of the world population of

Cape Barren geese The Cape Barren goose (''Cereopsis novaehollandiae'') is a large goose resident in southern Australia. Etymology The species' common name is derived from Cape Barren Island, where specimens were first sighted by European explorers. It is known ...

, as dry-season visitors from their offshore island breeding grounds, and significant numbers of

fairy tern The fairy tern (''Sternula nereis'') is a small tern which is native to the southwestern Pacific. It is listed as " Vulnerable" by the IUCN and the New Zealand subspecies is " Critically Endangered". There are three subspecies: * Australian fai ...

s and

hooded plover The hooded dotterel or hooded plover (''Thinornis cucullatus'') is a species of bird in the family Charadriidae. It is endemic to southern Australia, where it inhabits ocean beaches and subcoastal lagoons. There are two recognised subspecies whi ...

Slender-billed thornbill The slender-billed thornbill (''Acanthiza iredalei'') is a small bird native to Australia. It includes three sub-species: * ''A. i. hedleyi'' * ''A. i. iredalei'' * ''A. i. rosinae'' This thornbill can be found in shrublands and salt marshes, ...

s also occur in the park.

In Aboriginal mythology

Lake Newland is steeped in Aboriginal Australian mythology, specifically that of the Wirangu people. It is connected to the story of the Seven Sisters (based on the star constellation known as the

Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance ...

), a

creation story A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Creation myths develop ...

embodied in a

songline A songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) within the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia which mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" in the Dre ...

of great significance. In the story, a hunter named Tgilby (the Orion constellation), after falling in love with the seven sisters (Pleiades), known as Yugarilya, chases them out of the sky and onto and across the earth. He chases them as the Yugarilya chase a snake, Dyunu.

References

External links

Lake Newland Conservation Park official webpageLake Newland Conservation Park webpage on protected planet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lake Newland Conservation Park Conservation parks of South Australia Eyre Peninsula Protected areas established in 1991 1991 establishments in Australia