Musgrave Ranges is a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

Central Australia Central Australia, also sometimes referred to as the Red Centre, is an inexactly defined region associated with the geographic centre of Australia. In its narrowest sense it describes a region that is limited to the town of Alice Springs and i ...

, straddling the boundary 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 ...

(

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 ...

) and the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

(

MacDonnell Shire The MacDonnell Regional Council is a local government area of the Northern Territory, Australia. The region covers an area of and had an estimated population of 6,863 people in June 2018. Geography MacDonnell Regional Council occupies the ...

), extending into

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 ...

. It is between 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 cros ...

to the south and the

Gibson Desert The Gibson Desert is a large desert in Western Australia, largely in an almost "pristine" state. It is about in size, making it the fifth largest desert in Australia, after the Great Victoria, Great Sandy, Tanami and Simpson deserts. The ...

to the north. They have a length of and many peaks that have a height of more than , the highest being

Mount Woodroffe Mount Woodroffe (dual-named as "Ngarutjaranya/Mount Woodroofe") is a mountain in the Australian state of South Australia, located in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands in the state's northwest. It is South Australia's highest peak, a ...

at .

Inhabitants

They were originally inhabited by the indigenous

Yankunytjatjara The Yankunytjatjara people, also written Yankuntjatjarra, Jangkundjara, and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of South Australia. Language Yankunytjatjara is a Western Desert language belonging to the Wati la ...

people. The English explorer William Gosse and his team were the first white people to visit the region in the 1870s. Gosse named the mountains after Anthony Musgrave, then

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 ...

. At the start of the 20th century, Yankunytjatjara people began migrating east, and groups of

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 ...

moved into the Musgrave region from the west. Today, the majority of the families in the communities of

Amata According to Roman mythology, Amata (also called Palanto) was the wife of Latinus, king of the Latins, and the mother of their only child, Lavinia. In the Aeneid of Virgil, she commits suicide during the conflict between Aeneas and Turnus over ...

and

Kaltjiti Kaltjiti, formerly and also still known as Fregon, is an Aboriginal community in Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY lands) in South Australia, comprising one of the six main communities on "The Lands" (the others being Amata, Ernabella/ ...

identify as Pitjantjatjara. In a historic decision

freehold title In English law, a fee simple or fee simple absolute is an estate in land, a form of freehold ownership. A "fee" is a vested, inheritable, present possessory interest in land. A "fee simple" is real property held without limit of time (i.e., per ...

to the South Australian portion of the Musgrave Ranges was granted to the Pitjantjatjara people by virtue of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act 1981.

Mineral exploration

In order to combat unemployment, the Pitjantjatjara Elders seek to develop employment and opportunity within the Pitjantjatjara Lands.

Mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. ( ...

exploration Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians. Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most ...

companies in particular have been keen to discuss possible business alliances with the Pitjantjatjara people because in addition to being a highly prospective region (

platinum group The platinum-group metals (abbreviated as the PGMs; alternatively, the platinoids, platinides, platidises, platinum group, platinum metals, platinum family or platinum-group elements (PGEs)) are six noble, precious metallic elements clustered t ...

elements,

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

silver Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...

, possibly

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

), the region represents the largest freehold Aboriginal province in Australia and has had no modern

mineral exploration Mining in the engineering discipline is the extraction of minerals from underneath, open pit, above or on the ground. Mining engineering is associated with many other disciplines, such as mineral processing, exploration, excavation, geology, and ...

techniques applied since the Land Rights Act of 1981.

References

{{reflist Mountain ranges of South Australia Mountain ranges of Western Australia Mountain ranges of the Northern Territory Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Pitjantjatjara

Inhabitants

Mineral exploration

See also

References