Onkaparinga River Recreation 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:

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

Vis­it the Onka­paringa Riv­er Recre­ation Park at any time of year and you’ll find some­thing fun to do while you’re out enjoy­ing nature.

The parks are locat­ed 35km south of Ade­laide. Access to the Recre­ation Park from Riv­er Road, Noar­lun­ga Downs and from Com­mer­cial and Sauer­biers Roads, Seaford Meadows.

• Park maps

Take a vir­tu­al tour of this park

Get a taste for the beau­ty of the riv­er gorges, the wet­land board­walk and more.

• Geo­ra­ma vir­tu­al tour

Kayak­ing in Onka­paringa Riv­er Recre­ation Park

Parks are for all to enjoy, we would love to hear from you about your expe­ri­ence in nature. You can share your com­ments, pic­tures and videos with us and oth­ers by tag­ging @NationalParksSA on Face­book, Insta­gram or email us.

Facil­i­ties

Park­ing

There is a coun­cil owned car park locat­ed at Per­rys Bend with one ded­i­cat­ed acces­si­ble space.

Toi­let

There is a coun­cil owned, acces­si­ble toi­let (right hand) locat­ed at Per­rys Bend carpark and pic­nic area.

See and do

Pic­nic area

There is a coun­cil owned, pic­nic area with a BBQ and pic­nic tables locat­ed at Per­rys Bend.

Trails

Wet­lands Loop Trail (3km)

The flat trail is a mix­ture of board­walk, and some grav­el paths. A blog post by Push Adven­tures pro­vides some good infor­ma­tion on the Wet­lands Loop. Note that the blog posts iden­ti­fies some of the issues for wheel­chairs access­ing this walk­ing trail, includ­ing a short grassed sec­tion between the pic­nic shel­ter and the start of the trail, and that the grav­el paths may be mud­dy in win­ter. Note that there is a now a ded­i­cat­ed access path from the car park to the trail.

Dogs on a lead are also welcome.

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 wel­come in this park.

Please ensure you:

• Keep your dog under con­trol and on a lead no more than two metres in length.
• Stick to des­ig­nat­ed walk­ing trails.
• Bring dis­pos­able bags to clean up your dog’s fae­ces (please be aware there are no bins in nation­al parks).

Dis­cov­er oth­er 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 are many spots for an infor­mal pic­nic in the Onka­paringa Riv­er Recre­ation Park. There is park­ing, a BBQ, pic­nic tables, a kayak and canoe launch and a toi­let locat­ed at the main entrance on Riv­er Road.

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

• Park maps

• Read Ranger Tips: Onka­paringa Riv­er Parks blog. 
• Check out Nature Play SA’s 40 things to do in Onka­paringa Riv­er Nation­al and Recre­ation Park
• 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.

Learn­ing in nature vir­tu­al tour

This vir­tu­al tour has been cre­at­ed as a resource for teach­ers to assist with out­door learn­ing. This tour can be used before and after vis­it­ing Onka­paringa Riv­er Recre­ation Park or the Encounter Marine Park and can even be used by stu­dents in the classroom. 

This tour com­ple­ments the ​‘Learn­ing in nature at the Onka­paringa Estu­ary — pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment (PD) for teach­ers’ resource. The PD resource and this vir­tu­al tour con­tain a num­ber of activ­i­ty stops based around learn­ing con­cepts tied back to the cur­ricu­lum. This vir­tu­al tour also con­tains addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about plants, ani­mals, learn­ing ideas and links to addi­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al resources 

• Onka­paringa Riv­er Recre­ation Park — Learn­ing in nature vir­tu­al tour

Plants

With­in the flood­plain and estu­ary area of the Recre­ation Park, impor­tant sam­phire flats occur. These areas, along with their saline mar­gins, sup­port com­mu­ni­ties of sam­phire, chenopods, salt­bush and sedges. Sam­phire’s include Sar­co­cor­nia black­iana and Arthroc­ne­mum haloc­nemoides. Aquat­ic estu­ar­ine flo­ra is dom­i­nat­ed by Gar­weed and var­i­ous algae. 

Ani­mals

Mam­mals present with­in the park include west­ern grey kan­ga­roo, com­mon brush­tail pos­sum, com­mon ring­tail pos­sum and echid­na. The less­er long-eared bat and the south­ern for­est bat.

You’ll see all kinds of birdlife in the Onka­paringa Riv­er Natiop­nal Park, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you take a few moments to be still. There is a diverse range of species that live in, or vis­it, the park – many of con­ser­va­tion sig­nif­i­cance. Hunt­ing birds, such as the pere­grine fal­con, scour the land­scape in search of birds, small mam­mals and lizards. You’ll prob­a­bly hear the yel­low-tailed black cock­a­too long before you see one, their rau­cous cries announce their pres­ence well in advance.

Approx­i­mate­ly 20 fish species are record­ed for the estu­ary and riv­er. The major fish species include jump­ing mul­let, black bream and yel­low-eye mul­let. Algae, mol­luscs and gar­weed form the major diet of the fish species.

Amphib­ian records include: com­mon froglet, ban­jo frog, spot­ted marsh frog and brown tree frog. At least 20 rep­tile species have been record­ed in the reserves. These include cun­ning­ham’s skink, east­ern beard­ed drag­on and bark­ing gecko.

Com­mon but­ter­fly species include: mead­ow argus, cab­bage white, salt­bush blue, aus­tralian paint­ed lady, com­mon grass-blue and less­er wan­der­er. Gah­nia filum sedge-lands in the estu­ary may pro­vide habi­tat for pop­u­la­tions of the endan­gered yel­low­ish sedge-skipper.

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.

Trans­lat­ed from the Kau­r­na lan­guage, ​‘Ngang­ki’ means women, ​‘Pari’ means riv­er, and ​‘ngka’ means loca­tion. So the cor­rect trans­la­tion for Onka­paringa is Ngangkipar­ing­ka, which means women only places along the river.

There were many Kau­r­na yarta (land) fam­i­ly groups in the tra­di­tion­al areas that have been recog­nised as Kau­r­na pangkara (coun­try), and also along the plains and hills south of Crys­tal Brook and west of Mount Lofty to Cape Jervis. Many local place names such as ​‘Onka­paringa’, ​‘Noar­lun­ga’ and ​‘Willun­ga’ have their ori­gins in Kau­r­na language.

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

Colo­nial set­tle­ment began in the Noar­lun­ga dis­trict from about 1839. In 1831 Cap­tain Col­lett Bark­er entered the Onka­paringa Riv­er and ven­tured inland to the Horse­shoe Bend (Old Noar­lun­ga). Oth­er ear­ly explor­ers and sur­vey teams also passed through the dis­trict in 1837 – 8. By 1841, over 150 set­tlers occu­pied land in the Noar­lun­ga area. Set­tlers were pre­dom­i­nant­ly engaged in estab­lish­ing agri­cul­tur­al ven­tures but includ­ed ear­ly store­keep­ers. Growth and devel­op­ment with­in the dis­trict was rapid. A wood­en bridge was con­struct­ed across the riv­er in 1840. Ear­ly crops were trans­port­ed by flat-bot­tomed barge down the estu­ary and out through the mouth of the Onka­paringa Riv­er to wait­ing coastal ships. In 1854 – 5 a tow­path from Old Noar­lun­ga to the tramway ter­mi­nal at Port Noar­lun­ga was con­struct­ed to facil­i­tate the pas­sage of horse drawn barges.

In 1846 John Jared, of Lin­colnshire, brought his fam­i­ly to South Aus­tralia and farmed for 15 years in the Aldinga/​Willunga dis­trict before pur­chas­ing 240 acres at Noar­lun­ga. He called the prop­er­ty Clear Farm and grad­u­al­ly increased his hold­ing to 400 acres, much of which was with­in the cur­rent Onka­paringa Riv­er Recre­ation Park. In 1862 he con­struct­ed the fam­i­ly home and con­tin­ued to farm the land until suc­ceed­ed by his son John William Jared in 1871.

John William Jared extend­ed the house and with his wife Han­nah, renamed the prop­er­ty Pin­gle Farm. The remains of Pin­gle Farm are con­served with­in the reserve today. The struc­tures include the main dwelling, a large lime­stone barn and an under­ground cylin­dri­cal tank. Oth­er his­toric sites with­in the reserves con­tain­ing rem­nants of ear­ly set­tle­ment also exist but have yet to be researched or doc­u­ment­ed to ful­ly under­stand their significance.

The major­i­ty of the land that com­pris­es Onka­paringa Riv­er Recre­ation Park and Nation­al Park was trans­ferred to the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment in 1982 and was ded­i­cat­ed in 1985 as Onka­paringa Riv­er Recre­ation Park. The gorge sec­tion of the park was reclas­si­fied to Nation­al Park in 1993.