Black Hill Conservation Park

Open dai­ly.

Vehi­cle entry gate off Mary­vale Road is open between 8:30am — 4:30pm weekdays.

North­ern Lofty Dis­trict Office is open 9am-5pm weekdays. 

Clo­sures and safety

This park is closed on days of Cat­a­stroph­ic Fire Dan­ger and may also be closed on days of Extreme Fire Danger.

You can deter­mine the cur­rent fire dan­ger rat­ing by check­ing the Fire Ban Dis­trict map on the CFS website.

Check the CFS web­site or call the CFS Bush­fire Infor­ma­tion Hot­line 1800 362 361 for:

• Infor­ma­tion on fire bans and cur­rent fire conditions
• Cur­rent CFS warn­ings and incidents
• Infor­ma­tion on what to do in the event of a fire.

Lis­ten to your local area radio sta­tion for the lat­est updates and infor­ma­tion on fire safety.

Vis­i­tor infor­ma­tion, book­ings and park management:

Black Hill Nation­al Park and Wildlife Ser­vice Office
Phone: (08) 7133 7300
Email: DEW.​NPWSNorthLofty@​sa.​gov.​au

Emer­gency contacts:

Med­ical, fire (includ­ing bush­fire) and police emer­gency sit­u­a­tions
Phone: Triple Zero (000)

Police Assis­tance
Phone: 131 444 for non-urgent police assistance

Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice SA – Emer­gency After Hours Duty Offi­cer (voice mes­sages only, text mes­sages are unavail­able to be received)
Phone: 0427 556 676

Injured wildlife:

With­in the park
Please con­tact Black Hill Nation­al Park and Wildlife Ser­vice Office on (+61) 7133 7300 or the duty offi­cer on 0427 556 676

Out­side of the park
Please con­tact a local wildlife res­cue group

Black Hill can be vis­it­ed at any time of the year but it best appre­ci­at­ed dur­ing the months of March to Novem­ber. The sum­mer months of Decem­ber to Feb­ru­ary can be very hot, walk­ers should be pre­pared for high temperatures.

Black Hill can be accessed via Mary­vale, Gorge Road and Mon­ta­cute Road, as well as Addi­son Avenue.

If you’re in your own vehi­cle, you can find this park on the map.

• Park map

There is also pub­lic trans­port to this park from the Ade­laide city centre. 

• Ade­laide Metro bus and train services

Dogs are not per­mit­ted in this park.

Dis­cov­er which parks you can walk your dog in on our find a park tool or read 12 dog-friend­ly walks in Ade­laide Parks by Good Liv­ing for inspiration.

Assis­tance dogs are per­mit­ted in most pub­lic places and are there­fore wel­come in South Australia’s parks and reserves. Assis­tance dogs must be appro­pri­ate­ly restrained on a lead and remain under your effec­tive con­trol at all times while in a park or reserve.

As per the dogs in parks and reserves pol­i­cy, if the dog is not an accred­it­ed assis­tance dog, they must be trained to assist a per­son with a dis­abil­i­ty to alle­vi­ate that dis­abil­i­ty and meet stan­dards of hygiene and behav­iour appro­pri­ate for a dog in a pub­lic place. How­ev­er, refusal may be giv­en if the per­son with the dis­abil­i­ty is unable to pro­duce evi­dence the dog is an assis­tance dog with the appro­pri­ate training.

Before tak­ing your assis­tance dog into a park that does not nor­mal­ly allow dogs, it is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed that you con­tact us so we can pro­vide you with the lat­est infor­ma­tion on any poten­tial haz­ards with­in spe­cif­ic parks that may affect your dog. Please con­tact the park via the con­tact details pro­vid­ed under the con­tact tab or con­tact the vis­i­tor ser­vice cen­tre via email or on Face­book.

This park con­tains an infor­ma­tion office, leafy pic­nic areas and toi­lets. The loca­tion of these facil­i­ties can be found with­in our park maps.

• Park maps

Plants

The veg­e­ta­tion of Black Hill is diverse. The under­storey veg­e­ta­tion is influ­enced by land use and fire regimes as well as under­ly­ing geol­o­gy. There is con­sid­er­able species diver­si­ty with­in the parks with Black Hill record­ing 302 native and 52 intro­duced species.

Veg­e­ta­tion asso­ci­a­tions vary and include savan­na type wood­lands with herba­ceous under­storey and scle­ro­phyl­lus open forests dom­i­nat­ed by canopy species such as stringy­bark, pink gum, blue gum, red gum and man­na gum. 

Ani­mals

The park sup­ports a vari­ety of wildlife habi­tats, although past land use such as graz­ing and crop­ping have had an impact on the diver­si­ty of native wildlife. Be on the look out for the blue wrens, south­ern boo­book owls, black-faced cuck­oo-shrikes and the occa­sion­al fal­con that will hunt along the ridge­lines of the park. 

Of impor­tance are the heath cov­ered ridge lines that sup­port the endan­gered chest­nut-rumped heath wren, while the south­ern brown bandi­coot will seek out the gul­ly habitats. 

Flo­ra and fau­na species lists

To down­load flo­ra (plants) and fau­na (ani­mals) species lists for this park, use the ​‘Cre­ate Sim­ple Species List’ tab under ​‘Flo­ra Tools’ or ​‘Fau­na Tools’ in NatureMaps.

• Explore what oth­er nature and out­door activ­i­ties are avail­able in this area on the South Aus­tralia Tourism website. 

• Mobile phone cov­er­age can be patchy and unre­li­able in this park, espe­cial­ly if you are in low-lying areas.

• Parks man­age­ment plans
• Trails SA
• SA Marine Parks

• Impor­tant: Col­lec­tion of fire­wood with­in Nation­al Parks is pro­hib­it­ed. Dead wood plays a vital role in pro­vid­ing shel­ter for ani­mals and adding nutri­ents to the soil.

Phy­toph­tho­ra (fy-TOFF-tho­ra), oth­er­wise known as root-rot fun­gus, is killing our native plants and threat­ens the sur­vival of ani­mals depend­ing on plants for food and shelter.

This intro­duced fun­gus can be found in plant roots, soil and water. Help stop the spread by using hygiene sta­tions, stay­ing on tracks and trails and by com­ply­ing with all Phy­toph­tho­ra man­age­ment signs.

• Phy­toph­tho­ra brochure

The area is part of the tra­di­tion­al lands of the Kau­r­na (‘Gar-na) peo­ple. They used the land for hunt­ing and gath­er­ing and obtain­ing wood for fire and shel­ter dur­ing their sea­son­al relo­ca­tion from the coast. One of the group’s most impor­tant tools was fire, this was par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful in fire man­age­ment prac­tices which encour­aged veg­e­ta­tion regrowth. The sea­son­al use of Black Hill would have have allowed game pop­u­la­tions to recov­er, main­tain­ing a rel­a­tive­ly steady food supply.

Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples have occu­pied, enjoyed and man­aged the lands and waters of this State for thou­sands of gen­er­a­tions. For Abo­rig­i­nal first nations, cre­ation ances­tors laid down the laws of the Coun­try and bestowed a range of cus­tom­ary rights and oblig­a­tions to the many Abo­rig­i­nal Nations across our state. 

There are many places across the State that have great spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance to Abo­rig­i­nal first nations. At some of these places Abo­rig­i­nal cul­tur­al pro­to­cols, such as restrict­ed access, are pro­mot­ed and vis­i­tors are asked to respect the wish­es of Tra­di­tion­al Owners.

In places where pro­to­cols are not pro­mot­ed vis­i­tors are asked to show respect by not touch­ing or remov­ing any­thing, and make sure you take all your rub­bish with you when you leave.

Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples con­tin­ue to play an active role in car­ing for their Coun­try, includ­ing in parks across South Australia. 

• DEW Park management
• DEW Abo­rig­i­nal partnerships

Inter­est was shown in Black Hill’s poten­tial as a park as ear­ly as 1859 when mem­bers of the Field Nat­u­ral­ists Asso­ci­a­tion were impressed with the flo­ra flour­ish­ing on the hill­side as they walked to the sum­mit. Black HIll was pro­claimed a reserve in 1860 with an ini­tial por­tion of just 4 ha of land ded­i­cat­ed. The allu­vial flats adja­cent to 5^th Creek were devel­oped as mar­ket gar­dens dur­ing this peri­od and Black Hill became a source of wood for build­ing mate­ri­als. Wat­tle bark was col­lect­ed in the park for the sup­ply of tan­nin to the leather goods industry. 

From 1900 onwards, min­ing occurred with­in Black Hill for road mak­ing mate­r­i­al and for barites, a min­er­al used in the pro­duc­tion of paint pig­ment. In the late 1940s, FC Payne estab­lished a gar­den of 250 native plants from all over Aus­tralia. This lat­er became known nation­al­ly as the Athel­stone Wild­flower Gar­den and was bought by the City of Camp­bell­town in 1963.

The State Gov­ern­ment was keen to pur­chase land in the Black Hill area dur­ing the 1960s when the Ade­laide Met­ro­pol­i­tan Devel­op­ment Plan had pro­posed the cre­ation of a region­al park in the vicin­i­ty to cater for open space require­ments of the north east sub­urbs. Between 1970 and 1975, the State Gov­ern­ment pro­gres­sive­ly acquired the parcels of land that were to be pro­claimed Black Hill Con­ser­va­tion Park in 1975, this includ­ed the Athel­stone Wild­flower Garden.