What landform is the Kimberley?

What landform is the Kimberley?

Kimberley, also called The Kimberleys, plateau region of northern Western Australia, extending from the rugged northwest Indian Ocean coast south to the Fitzroy River and east to the Ord River. The plateau has an area of about 162,000 square miles (420,000 square km).

Is the Kimberley a landscape?

An ancient landscape covering hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, the Kimberley is one of the world’s most precious wilderness regions.

What makes the Kimberley unique?

What makes the Kimberley so special? The Kimberley has some of the largest intact natural areas left on the planet – comparable with the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon rainforest. The Kimberley is also a culturally rich region, where Traditional Owners have a strong connection to country.

How was the Kimberley made?

The Kimberley Group are a number of ranges of Precambrian rocks, greater than 2 billion years old, that form the Kimberley Plateau that is an exotic terrane which collided with other blocks that formed the original landmass of Australia.

What is Kimberley famous for?

Kimberley is a prospecting City famous for its quality diamonds, the largest man-made excavation in the World and impressive variety of tourists attractions. It is the Capital City of the Northern Cape and surrounded by five of South Africa’s big rivers, two of them being the Orange and Vaal Rivers.

Why is the Kimberley important?

The west Kimberley is one of Australia’s very special places. It is a vast area of dramatic and relatively undisturbed landscapes that has great biological richness and provides important geological and fossil evidence of Australia’s evolutionary history.

Why is the Kimberley so important?

What is Kimberley known for?

diamond
Kimberley, in the east, is well known for its diamond-mining past and is still a centre for mining and cutting diamonds. Northern Cape province produces almost all of the manganese mined in South Africa.

Who found the Kimberley?

The area was first explored by Alexander Forrest in 1879. Forrest was the first European man to discover and name the Kimberley district, the Margaret and Ord Rivers, the King Leopold Ranges, and the fertile area between the Fitzroy and Ord Rivers.

How deep is the Big Hole in Kimberley?

214 m deep
It is said that the Big Hole is the largest excavation site dug by hand in the world; so large, in fact, that it can be seen from space! The crater is 214 m deep, with a surface area of approximately 17 rugby fields and a perimeter of 1,6 km.

How did Kimberley get its name?

The name Kimberley is derived from the Anglo Saxon word Cynburgh-leah, which means “women were entitled to own land”. Two years later Lord Kimberley became a member of Gladstone’s first cabinet and from 1870 he served as Secretary for the Colonies.

What to do in Kimberley in South Africa?

There is also a café, gift and jewelry shops, and many structures and artifacts left from the days when Kimberly was a thriving mining town. Visitors can walk the eerily empty streets of the company town and step into the modest home where the De Beers family lived.

What are the most important habitats in the Kimberley?

Lake Argyle and other wetlands of the Ord and the Kimberley are important habitats while there are important populations of shorebirds in the Ord estuary, Eighty-mile Beach and Roebuck Bay, which has been described as “one of the most important stop-over areas for shorebirds in Australia and globally”.

How did the Kimberley Mine benefit South Africa?

Little of the riches dug from the Kimberly mines benefitted South Africans; most of the treasure was sent overseas. The Kimberley diamond mine enriched Englishman Cecil Rhodes, who founded De Beers. The company became a virtual monopoly.

What kind of economy does the Kimberley region have?

The Kimberley region has a diverse regional economy. Mining, construction, tourism, retail, agriculture, and pearling are major contributors to the region’s economic output. The town of Broome has a flourishing pearling industry, which operates around the Kimberley coast.