Kanyaka is a rural locality in the Far North region of South Australia, situated in the Flinders Ranges Council.

A government town of Kanyaka along the main road was surveyed in 1863, although not proclaimed; although the Kanyaka township itself would be a failure and the least successful of the four former towns in the modern-day locality, it allowed for the construction of a two-story hotel, the Great Northern Hotel, on the main road in 1865.

[10] The modern locality also subsumed four former government towns: Kanyaka, Gordon, Simmonston, and Wilson, as well as their surrounding pastoral lands.

It was surveyed in November 1880, and named after Charles Wilson, a "brother officer" of Governor William Jervois.

[13] Gordon, located along the road to the south, on the edge of the modern border with Willochra was another village of several blocks, named on 2 October 1879 by Governor Jervois, reportedly after one of his brothers; it also contained its own railway station.