Ikara-Flinders Ranges

Declared in 1945 and officially renamed in 2016 with its dual name Ikara-Flinders Ranges in recognition of the Adnyamathanha traditional owners, it protects Wilpena Pound (Ikara in their language), a vast natural rock amphitheatre several kilometres across formed by the folding of sedimentary layers more than 800 million years old, so large that it can only be taken in whole from the air. Its exposed gorges, such as Brachina Gorge, cut through geological layers documenting more than 130 million years of Earth history practically without a break, including some of the earliest fossils of complex animal life known to science, predating the Cambrian explosion.