The Ouldburra Formation (Early Cambrian) is a newly defined sequence of carbonates, mixed carbonate/siliciclastics and evaporites in the northeastern Officer Basin, northern South Australia. Deposition took place during the late stages of transgression and the subsequent regression of an epeiric sea with a flanking marine sabkha. In the Manya area, deposition began with the precipitation of bottom nucleated halite in small isolated salinas on a peri-emergent siliciclastic sand flat. The transgression of the epeiric sea had extended throughout the Marla-Manya area by the Botoman Stage of the Cambrian. Archaeocyath/algal bioherms, stromatolitic and thrombolitic algal/mud mounds and thin ooid shoals developed offshore. The combination of very shallow conditions and a low degree of depositional slope produced a broad non-tidal nearshore zone in which algal mats were preserved and sedimentation was punctuated by storm events. The epeiric sea was flanked by a marine sabkha which contained displacive chicken-wire anhydrite within the emergent sediment profile and was characterised by near-surface dolomitization, either by seepage reflux of sabkha derived brines or evaporative pumping of evolved marine water. Sedimentation was cyclic throughout much of the depositional history of the Formation. Shallowing-up cycles, typically 1 to 5 m thick, include a wide variety of lithologies and lithofacies and often terminate with exposure. More-pervasive subaerial exposure surfaces can be correlated over tens of kilometres. Carbonate sedimentation ended as sabkha red beds prograded basinward, in some areas across exposed marine carbonates.