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 as a 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.