Hallett Cove Conservation Park

Open dai­ly.

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 Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice Office
Phone: (+61) 7133 7300
Email: DEW.​NPWSSouthMetro@​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 Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice Office on (+61) 7133 7300 or the after-hours duty offi­cer on 0427 556 676 (out­side of busi­ness hours).

Out­side of the park
Please con­tact a local wildlife res­cue group

Marine mam­mals
If you find a sick or strand­ed marine mam­mal (includ­ing whales, seals, sea lions and dol­phins), please con­tact Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice Cen­tral Lofty Office on (+61) 7133 7300 or the Duty offi­cer on 0427 556 676.

Hal­lett Cove Con­ser­va­tion Park is beau­ti­ful all year round. Spring sees the wild­flow­ers come in to bloom and ani­mals start to become active again after the cool­er months. Sum­mer shows the harsh nature of the Ade­laide Coast­line as many plants revert to ​‘sur­vival mode’ with the ocean cliffs offer­ing a cool retreat dur­ing the high sum­mer heat. Autumn has the plants regain­ing their vigour with many bird species on show. Win­ter can bring spec­tac­u­lar storms with the beach con­di­tions chang­ing dai­ly — from pure peb­bles to sand almost over night. 

Hal­lett Cove Con­ser­va­tion Park is locat­ed 22km south of Adelaide. 

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

Facil­i­ties

Park­ing

There is a coun­cil owned car park, with 2 acces­si­ble parks locat­ed at the south end of Hal­lett Cove Con­ser­va­tion Park.

Toi­lets

There is an acces­si­ble (left hand) toi­let locat­ed next to the Boat­shed Café at the car park.

See and do

Trails

A bitu­men path leads from the café towards Black Cliff Look­out where the trail steep­ens con­sid­er­ably (up to 12%). Assis­tance will be required in this sec­tion to the look­out. The trail beyond the look­out is not an acces­si­ble trail. Check out our video of the access trails at Hal­lett Cove Con­ser­va­tion Park.

Check out Push Adven­tures – Hal­lett Cove to Black Point Coastal Trail blog for acces­si­ble trail descrip­tions and photos.

Beach

There is no wheel­chair access avail­able to the beach. 

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.

There is no vehi­cle access into the park but car park­ing is avail­able at the north­ern, east­ern and south­ern entrances. The walk­ing trails are shown on the trail­head at each entrance and give a good per­spec­tive of Hal­lett Cove. The walk trac­ing the geo­log­i­cal his­to­ry along the cliff top gives excel­lent views of the coast­line. Snorkelling and swim­ming are per­mit­ted along the beach in the south-west­ern cor­ner of the park. There is a café at the south­ern beach end.

Coun­cil man­aged pub­lic toi­lets are locat­ed in the Boat­shed Café at the Heron Way entrance to the Park. 

The loca­tion of these facil­i­ties can be found with­in our park maps.

• Park maps

• City of Mar­i­on coastal walk­ing trails brochure
• Dis­cov­er 10 things to see and do at Hal­lett Cove on the Good Liv­ing blog.
• Explore what oth­er nature and out­door activ­i­ties are avail­able in this area on the South Aus­tralia Tourism web­site.

• 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.

Our rangers love hav­ing schools in the park, learn­ing in nature. While we update our online infor­ma­tion and resources to assist teach­ers and oth­er learn­ing providers, we sug­gest vis­it­ing the Green Ade­laide nature edu­ca­tion pages for resources. Addi­tion­al­ly, please con­tact the park office to book one of our facil­i­ties for your next school excursion.

Abo­rig­i­nal stone imple­ments were first dis­cov­ered at Hal­lett Cove in 1934 and over a peri­od of 30 years, more than 1700 arte­facts were col­lect­ed, and are now part of the South Aus­tralian Muse­um collection.

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

Plants

Many local native species have been plant­ed by the Friends Group in an ongo­ing effort to restore the native veg­e­ta­tion. The coastal zone is colonised by local salt-tol­er­ant plants includ­ing ruby salt­bush, com­mon boobial­la, flax-lilies, angu­lar pig­face, cush­ion fan­flower and numer­ous native grass species.

The slopes of the Amphithe­atre are cov­ered by a coastal heath of great diver­si­ty, includ­ing pale tur­pen­tine bush, coast twin­leaf and sea box.

The areas beyond the coast and Amphithe­atre are grad­u­al­ly being returned to an open scrub­land of melaleu­cas, euca­lypts and pittosporums.

Ani­mals

Along Water­fall Creek there are a num­ber of species of frogs. Across the park are small lizards, leg­less lizards, skinks, and east­ern brown snakes. Many species of birds have been sight­ed in the park. You might see colour­ful superb fairy-wrens, hon­eyeaters and kestrels as well as a vari­ety of shore-wad­ing and sea birds. 

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.

This area was pro­claimed as a con­ser­va­tion park in 1976 pri­mar­i­ly to con­serve its geo­log­i­cal fea­tures. These fea­tures are of world­wide sig­nif­i­cance, par­tic­u­lar­ly as a record of an ice age about 280 mil­lion years ago. Four main peri­ods of geo­log­i­cal his­to­ry in the Hal­lett Cove area are described on the trail­heads at the entrances and along the trails. The park also con­serves native flo­ra and fauna.

In 1875, Pro­fes­sor Ralph Tate found the smoothed and stri­at­ed ​‘glacial’ pave­ment at Black Cliff and was the first per­son to realise that South Aus­tralia had been sub­ject­ed to an ice age. But which one? The age of the glacia­tion was debat­ed until in 1895 Pro­fes­sor Wal­ter Howchin sug­gest­ed that it was of Per­mi­an-Car­bonif­er­ous age, that is about 280 mil­lion years old.

Sub­se­quent geo­log­i­cal work has demon­strat­ed that at that time Aus­tralia was much clos­er to Antarc­ti­ca and was part of the ancient land mass called Gond­wana. Dur­ing that time the south-west­ern two-thirds of Aus­tralia, includ­ing much of South Aus­tralia, was cov­ered by an ice cap and glac­i­ers, sim­i­lar to present day Antarctica.

In 1957, Pro­fes­sor AR Alder­man from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide wrote to the Nation­al Trust rec­om­mend­ing that the excel­lent glacial pave­ments along the coastal cliff tops of Hal­lett Cove be pre­served. For the 19 years fol­low­ing this let­ter, con­ser­va­tion­ists and com­mu­ni­ty groups fought to pre­serve these valu­able geo­log­i­cal sites against sub­ur­ban devel­op­ment. Final­ly, in 1976 the park was ded­i­cat­ed for the pro­tec­tion of fea­tures of sci­en­tif­ic (geo­log­i­cal) and his­toric inter­est in the Hal­lett Cove area.