Yalata, South Australia
| Yalata South Australia | |||||||||||||||
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Yalata township looking north-east | |||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 31°23′03″S 131°37′14″E / 31.384108°S 131.620547°E | ||||||||||||||
| Population | 302 (UCL 2021) | ||||||||||||||
| Established | Mission: 1954, 1994. Locality: 23 October 2003 | ||||||||||||||
| Postcode(s) | 5690 | ||||||||||||||
| Elevation | 90 m (295 ft) | ||||||||||||||
| Area | 4563 km2 (1762 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
| Time zone | ACST (UTC+9:30) | ||||||||||||||
| • Summer (DST) | ACDT (UTC+10:30) | ||||||||||||||
| Location | |||||||||||||||
| LGA(s) | Aboriginal Council of Yalata | ||||||||||||||
| Region | Eyre Western | ||||||||||||||
| County | Hopetoun (part) | ||||||||||||||
| State electorate(s) | Flinders | ||||||||||||||
| Federal division(s) | Grey | ||||||||||||||
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| Footnotes | Adjoining localities | ||||||||||||||
Yalata (/ˈjælətɑː/ yal-ə-TAH), in the isolated far west of South Australia, is both an Indigenous Protected Area and, within that, a township of the same name where an Aboriginal community lives. The township is 206 kilometres (128 mi) west of Ceduna – the nearest town – via the Eyre Highway, and 982 kilometres (610 miles) by road from the state capital, Adelaide. It lies on the traditional lands of the Wirangu people. The settlement began as Yalata Mission in the early 1950s when Pila Nguru people were moved from Ooldea Mission when that closed, after previously being moved from their land in the Great Victoria Desert owing to nuclear testing by the British Government. The old Colona sheep station nearby is now part of Yalata Indigenous Protected Area.
The Atlas of South Australia describes the Yalata area as:
...sandy plain with deep sand and parabolic dunes. The vegetative cover is open mallee scrub with a mixed understory of chenopod shrubs and grasses and low open woodland with a chenopod shrub understory.