Mount Woodroffe (dual-named as "Ngarutjaranya/Mount Woodroofe") is a mountain in the

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n 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 in the

Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara, also known as APY, APY Lands or ''the Lands'', is a large, sparsely-populated local government area (LGA) for Aboriginal people, located in the remote north west of South Australia. Some of the aṉangu ...

lands in the state's northwest. It is

's highest peak, at .

Cultural significance

The mountain is known to the

Pitjantjatjara The Pitjantjatjara (; or ) are an Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert near Uluru. They are closely related to the Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra and their languages are, to a large extent, mutually intelligible (all are vari ...

Indigenous Australians 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 ...

as Ngarutjaranya. In Indigenous Australian mythology, the mountain embodies the mythological creature Ngintaka.

Geography

Mount Woodroffe is located in the far northwest of

, in the

Musgrave Ranges Musgrave Ranges is a mountain range in Central Australia, straddling the boundary of South Australia (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) and the Northern Territory ( MacDonnell Shire), extending into Western Australia. It is between the Grea ...

. The mountain range rises some 700–800 metres from the surrounding plains and comprises massifs of

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 ...

and

gneiss Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures an ...

History

William Ernest Giles was the first white man to pass through the area and camped to the south of Woodroffe on September 7, 1873. William Christie Gosse had previously named it Mt Woodroffe on July 20 that same year. Woodroffe was named after

George Woodroffe Goyder George Woodroffe Goyder (24 June 1826 – 2 November 1898) was a surveyor in the Colony of South Australia during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He rose rapidly in the civil service, becoming Assistant Surveyor-General by 1856 ...

, Surveyor-General of South Australia and an early Australian explorer. In the 1960s Mount Woodroffe was considered as a potential site for the proposed Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). It lost out due to its remoteness compared to Siding Spring in

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

, where the AAT sits today amongst other astronomical observatories.

Access

Access is limited as a permit is required to enter the Anangu

lands.

References

External links