The Everard Ranges, officially known as The Everard Ranges, is a range of low rounded

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 und ...

hills located in the Australian 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 ...

in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands about west of Mintabie. It is of Palaeocene origin between 20 and 60 million years ago, in Central Australia . Rising into domes above a

Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configu ...

peneplain 390px, Sketch of a hypothetical peneplain formation after an orogeny. In geomorphology and geology, a peneplain is a low-relief plain formed by protracted erosion. This is the definition in the broadest of terms, albeit with frequency the usage ...

, which is here about above sea level., they were named by

Ernest Giles William Ernest Powell Giles (20 July 1835 – 13 November 1897), best known as Ernest Giles, was an Australian explorer who led five major expeditions to parts of South Australia and Western Australia. Early life Ernest Giles was born in Bris ...

. after a cattle station called "

Everard Park Everard Park is a small inner south-western suburb of Adelaide in the City of Unley, once part of the extensive land holdings of the prominent colonist Dr. Charles George Everard, and the location of "Marshfield", the home of part of his fami ...

", and consist of

monolith A monolith is a geological feature consisting of a single massive stone or rock, such as some mountains. For instance, Savandurga mountain is a monolith mountain in India. Erosion usually exposes the geological formations, which are often ma ...

s or

bornhardt A bornhardt () is a dome-shaped, steep-sided, bald rock outcropping at least in height and several hundred metres in width. They are named after Wilhelm Bornhardt (1864–1946), a German geologist and explorer of German East Africa, who first d ...

s, rich in caves and overhangs with Aboriginal rock painting galleries. The ranges are similar to

Uluru Uluru (; pjt, Uluṟu ), also known as Ayers Rock ( ) and officially gazetted as UluruAyers Rock, is a large sandstone formation in the centre of Australia. It is in the southern part of the Northern Territory, southwest of Alice Springs ...

and

Kata Tjuta Kata Tjuṯa / The Olgas ( Pitjantjatjara: , lit. 'many heads'; ) is a group of large, domed rock formations or bornhardts located about southwest of Alice Springs, in the southern part of the Northern Territory, central Australia. Uluṟu / ...

. Giles described them in his book, ''Australia Twice Traversed'' as follows:

''"Arriving at the first hills of the Everard, I found they were all very peculiar, bare, red, granite mounds, being the most extraordinary ranges one could possibly imagine, if indeed any one could imagine such a scene. They have thousands of acres of bare rock, piled up into mountainous shapes and lay in isolated masses, forming something like a broken circle, all round a central and higher mass. They have valleys filled with scrubs between each section. Numerous rocky glens and gorges were seen, having various kinds of shrubs and low trees growing in the interstices of the rocks. Every thing and every place was parched, bare, and dry. We searched in many places for water without success."

Tourism in the area has been taken under the wing of the Mimili community, lying about 22 km north-east. There is an extensive

radiation In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. This includes: * ''electromagnetic radiation'', such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, vi ...

of camaenid land snails in the region, with many species appearing endemic to the Everard Ranges, including ''

Pleuroxia ''Pleuroxia'' is a genus of air-breathing land snails, terrestrial gastropod mollusks in the subfamily Hadrinae of the family Camaenidae. MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Pleuroxia Ancey, 1887. Accessed through: World Register of Marine ...

everardensis'', ''P. carmeena'', '' Sinumelon pumilio'', '' Tatemelon everardensis'', '' Semotrachia minuta'', ''S. illbilleeana'', '' Dirutrachia ponderi''.

References

{{reflist Mountain ranges of South Australia Far North (South Australia) Bornhardts