Koonalda Cave facts for kids

Koonalda Cave is a cave in the Australian state of South Australia, on the Nullarbor Plain in the locality of Nullarbor. It is notable as an archeological site.

I.D. Lewis described the cave in 1976 as:

Large doline 60m in diam. and 25m deep; talus slope to two main large passages connected by a high window; total length of cave 1200m; three lakes at -80m; narrow airspace beyond third lake leads to 45m diam. dome and lake; another 30m sump leads off this...

Thousands of square metres in the cave are covered in parallel finger-marked geometric lines and patterns, Indigenous Australian artwork which has been dated as 20,000 years old, making it older than any known prehistoric art in Europe. It is located about 99 kilometres (62 mi) west of the Nullarbor roadhouse and about 97 kilometres (60 mi) north east from Eucla within the Nullarbor Wilderness Protection Area.

The cave was abandoned 19,000 years ago, and rediscovered by archeologists in 1956.

The cave was explored by an expedition led by Captain J. M. Thompson in 1935. The team entered the cave by a ladder and found themselves in a chamber some 244 metres (800 ft) in circumference and walked down tunnels over 366 metres (1,200 ft) in length.

In the 1960s, the cave was excavated by Alexander Gallus, who found that Aboriginal peoples had mined flint there.

Koonalda Cave was declared as a prohibited area under the South Australian Aboriginal and Historic Relics Preservation Act 1965 on 30 May 1968. It was listed on the South Australian Heritage Register on 4 March 1993 and inscribed onto the Australian National Heritage List on 15 October 2014. It was also listed on the now-defunct Register of the National Estate.