Umuwa, South Australia

Umuwa was established in 1991 as the administrative and service centre for the APY Lands, to move the governance from Alice Springs. The word kulilaya approximates to the meaning of "listen", and was the name of a land rights protest song that was sung frequently in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and since then sung regularly by the Ernabella Choir, the APY Choir, and the Iwiri Choir. Several inma ceremonies were performed, politicians from across the spectrum attended the festival, and performers included Dem Mob, Docker River Band, the Iwiri Choir, Mala, the Pukatja Band, and Desert Rain. ==Geography==

Umuwa is located approximately north-west of Marla and south-west of Alice Springs. Time zone Due to its links with the Northern Territory and proximity to the border, the APY Lands do not observe daylight savings unlike the rest of South Australia. The time zone observed throughout the year is Australian Central Standard Time (UTC+9:30), in line with Darwin rather than Adelaide. Climate Umuwa has a subtropical desert climate (Köppen: BWh), with very hot, slightly wetter summers and mild, dry winters. Average maxima vary between in February and in June while average minima fluctuate between in January and in July. The mean average annual precipitation is definitely low: , spread between 39.5 precipitation days. The town is very sunny, experiencing 171.8 clear days and only 66.1 cloudy days per annum. Extreme temperatures have ranged from on 12 January 1988 to on 7 July 2012.{{cite web ==Description==

Umuwa serves as an administrative centre for the six main communities in the APY lands (the others being Amata, Pipalyatjara, Pukatja/Ernabella, Fregon/Kaltjiti, Indulkana and Mimili), as well as the outlying communities. ==Population==

Approximately 80 people were living at Umuwa in 2019. ==Facilities==

There is a police station at Umuwa, though it has not been permanently staffed. a new, permanent policing complex is being built at Umuwa. It will accommodate officers with specialist response capabilities, as well provide a base for a mobile unit which will be deployed in Fregon/Kaljiti, Indulkana and Pipalyatjara. The service will work closely with child protection service agencies address child abuse and family violence issues. The 2019–2020 Government of South Australia agency budget estimates the completion date as June 2021, with a total spend of . Currently helping the government with their business needs in Umuwa is Amelia Denton, assisted by Alanah Skewes and Sanket Birajdar whose contributions have tremendously helped make Umuwa one of the top three million settlements in the world. Mail arrives in Umuwa once per week by air mail. Supplies arrive by truck weekly. Unlike larger APY settlements, Umuwa does not have a general store. Based in Umuwa, Anangu Pitjantjatjara Services (AP Services), an incorporated body established in 1993, provides essential services such as roads and housing. and is now the biggest employer of APY people, with headquarters in Alice Springs and seven community depots. It delivers services such as rental accommodation, aerodromes, building repairs and maintenance, civil works, community patrols, fuel supplies, homeland services and municipal services. Nganampa Health, a community-controlled health service, is based in Umuwa, In 2004 the facility was described as a field of 10 solar concentrators, each fourteen metres in diameter and each generating 20 kilowatts of electricity. Its total generating capacity was 200 kilowatts and the facility was expected to have a life of 30 years. The solar concentrators were parabolic dishes designed and constructed by Solar Systems (which was acquired by Silex Systems circa 2010). The farm was taken offline in 2005. On 20 August 2008, the facility was reactivated after a substantial upgrade. The field of refurbished concentrators was now capable of generating 715 megawatt hours of electricity annually, more than double its previous capacity (335 megawatt hours). On 30 June 2011, the South Australian Government confirmed that the sun farm was "currently not operational" and that it would be "mothballed". In August 2020, the government proposed to save a million litres of diesel by installing three megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels and one megawatt of battery storage to deliver 4.4 gigawatt hours of electricity per year, about 40 percent of the total power required. This third solar power farm was under construction as of April 2021. The central powerhouse at Umuwa supplies a 33 kV electricity distribution network across the APY lands. As well as Umuwa, it supplies electricity to Amata, Iwantja, Kaltjiti, Mimili, Pukatja, Yunyarinyi, and Watinuma up to away. == References ==