Destination Profile - The Flinders Ranges, South Australia
Flinders Ranges National Park is located between the townships of Hawker and Blinman within the Flinders Ranges covering an area of 95,000 hectares (950 sq km). Located 450 km north of Adelaide the park offers a wide range of activities including bushwalking, camping, scenic touring, birdwatching and Aboriginal and European cultural experiences.
The Flinders Ranges are noted for their rugged mountain ranges, spectacular gorges, sheltered creeks lined with river red gums and abundant wildlife. This area is world-renowned for its geological history, Aboriginal rock art sites, impressive fossil remains and its ruins of early European settlement.
Aborigines have lived in the Flinders Ranges for tens of thousands of years. For the Adnyamathanha - the hills or rock people, the Ranges are still of immense cultural significance. While geologists use science to explain the formation of the Flinders, the Adnyamathanha people understand the land through their Yura Muda stories, which endow the physical features of the Ranges with spiritual meaning.
Scientists believe that the Flinders Ranges began to form about 800 million years ago when a great depression, known as the Adelaide Geosyncline, developed as the earth's crust stretched and thinned. The sea flooded in and, for 300 million years, huge amounts of rock debris, stripped from the land, was deposited in the deepening depression to thicknesses of many kilometres. About 700 million years ago rocks from icebergs were incorporated into the sediment.
The Flinders Ranges supports an eccentric mix of moisture dependant and arid adapted plants. The specialised habitats of local endemics, are bound to the region's geology. Native vegetation is shaped by landform, soil, climate and fire. It is also influenced by human activity. Native plants sustained the cultural and economic lives of the Flinders Ranges Andyamathanha for thousands of years.
This destination is part of the Discover the Hart of the Flinders Australian Adventure.
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