Breakaway COUNTRY
The Kanku-Breakaways Conservation Park, in the heart of South Australia, is a unique and strikingly beautiful landscape of profound cultural significance to Aboriginal people as well as a major drawcard for the nearby opal mining town of Coober Pedy.
It embraces almost 15,000 hectares of majestic arid scenery — flat-topped mesas rising from a stony gibber desert, daubed in a palette of brilliant white, golden yellow, rosy pink and sunburnt ochre.
It is important in itself and as part of a network of reserves that are critical to the conservation of the SA outback.
NATURAL WONDERS
From a distance, this scattering of low hills appears to have ‘broken away’ from the higher escarpment of the nearby Stuart Range, earning them their common name of ‘The Breakaways’.
But appearances can be deceptive and this simple epithet gives little clue to the complex forces of nature that have created these geological marvels.
“These erosive forces continue to work on the ancient landforms in a climate that is arguably the hottest and driest of any region on the continent”
About 115 million years ago, the central plains
