History
The name "You Yang" comes from the Aboriginal words Wurdi Youang or Ude Youang meaning "big mountain in the middle of a plain". Aboriginal people enlarged natural hollows in the rocks to form wells that held water even in dry seasons.
Explorer Matthew Flinders was the first European to visit the You Yangs. On 1 May 1802, he and three of his men climbed to the highest point. He named it "Station Peak" but the name was changed in 1912 to "Flinders Peak" in his honour.
The You Yangs have always attracted artists to paint them and feature most strongly in works by one of Australia's greatest artists, Fred Williams. Williams spent long periods developing his plein air representations of the You Yangs, and these have now become classics of Australian art — rugged, dramatic, yet sparse in their imagery — unquestionably of the Australian bush.
Read more about this topic: You Yangs
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