Piccaninnie Ponds 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:

Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice Mount Gam­bier Office
Phone: (+61 8) 7424 5770 

Book­ing enquiries please email:
DEW.​SEOnlineBookings@​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 – After-hours duty offi­cer
Phone: (+61 8) 7424 5770

Injured wildlife:

With­in the park
Please con­tact Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice Mount Gam­bier Office on (08) 7424 5770

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, sealions and dol­phins), please con­tact Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice Mount Gam­bier Office on (08) 7424 5770

Pic­canin­nie Ponds Con­ser­va­tion Park is locat­ed 32km south east of Mount Gam­bier or 482km south east of Ade­laide. Access is via Pic­canin­nie Ponds Road.

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.

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.

There is an inter­pre­tive infor­ma­tion shel­ter, toi­lets, dis­abled toi­lets and a divers’ chang­ing shel­ter with­in the park. 

• 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.

• Wet­land of inter­na­tion­al importance
• Low­er South East Marine Park
• Cave Divers Asso­ci­a­tion of Australia

• 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.

The Bun­gan­ditj Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple are the tra­di­tion­al own­ers of this area.

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

Six veg­e­ta­tion com­mu­ni­ties have been iden­ti­fied in the ark. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance are those asso­ci­at­ed with the unique wet­land fen envi­ron­ments. Oth­er sig­nif­i­cant com­mu­ni­ties include the west­ern wet­land fen veg­e­ta­tion of silky tea-tree and bot­tle­brush tea-tree and the aquat­ic plant com­mu­ni­ties of the fresh­wa­ter ponds. 

Oth­er veg­e­ta­tion found with­in the park includes reeds, sedge swamp, open heath and tus­sock grassland.

In addi­tion, 24 known species which occur in the park are at risk in South Australia. 

Ani­mals

Over 60 species of birds have been record­ed in the area, many of which live and breed in the park.

Five species of native mam­mals have been record­ed in the park. Of note are the swamp antech­i­nus, a crit­i­cal­ly endan­gered species once wide­spread in coastal wetlands.

Sev­er­al fish species have been record­ed in the Ponds includ­ing the short finned eel, south­ern pigmy perch and Yarra pigmy perch.

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.

The south east of South Aus­tralia has been exten­sive­ly mod­i­fied since Euro­pean set­tle­ment, by agri­cul­tur­al, sil­vi­cul­tur­al, pas­toral and urban devel­op­ment. Loss of wet­land through drainage for agri­cul­ture has been sub­stan­tial. Approx­i­mate­ly 11% of for­mer wet­lands in the south east still exist, but only 14% of this area of remain­ing wet­lands con­tain per­ma­nent open water. The wet­lands with­in this park are there­fore of par­tic­u­lar con­ser­va­tion importance.