Plan your visit to Nilpena Ediacara National Park

Nilpe­na Edi­acara Nation­al Park is cur­rent­ly closed to the pub­lic while fin­ish­ing touch­es on the new vis­i­tor precinct and fos­sil site are com­plet­ed. A lot of work has been done behind the scenes to cre­ate a very unique vis­i­tor expe­ri­ence and it will become a new attrac­tion for the Flinders Ranges.

Nilpe­na is a site of huge inter­na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance and an active geo­log­i­cal research site. To ensure it’s pro­tect­ed, vis­i­tors will only be able to vis­it by book­ing a guid­ed tour. There will be no overnight facil­i­ties or areas to freely under­take recreation.

Set to open in the first half of 2023, the new vis­i­tor precinct itself is made up of three her­itage build­ings of the for­mer pas­toral sta­tion. These are the Black­smith’s Shop, Wool­shed and the Shear­er’s Quarters.

The park is locat­ed on the west­ern mar­gins of the Flinders Ranges adja­cent to Lake Tor­rens, 540 km north of Ade­laide in South Aus­tralia. When the park opens, it can be accessed via the Out­back High­way 30 min­utes north of Parachilna and 40 min­utes south of Leigh Creek.

The Black­smith’s Shop experience

The for­mer Blacksmith’s Shop is being refur­bished to become a state-of-the-art inter­pre­ta­tion cen­tre. The new expe­ri­ence at the Black­smith’s Shop is being cre­at­ed by a spe­cial­ist project team that includes stone­ma­sons, audio-visu­al tech­ni­cians, fur­ni­ture crafts­men and palaeontologists.

With­in the Black­smith’s Shop, vis­i­tors will enjoy a one-of-kind fos­sil expe­ri­ence. It’s called Alice’s Restau­rant Bed, so named after a 1967 Arlo Guthrie song because it includes a fos­sil bed that’s teem­ing with exam­ples of the first ani­mal life. The fos­sil bed is brought to life by an impres­sive, tai­lor-made inter­pre­tive dis­play with audio visu­al recon­struc­tions of what these organ­isms looked like and how they behaved.

Vis­i­tors will be able to see first-hand the evi­dence of mul­ti­cel­lu­lar ani­mal life etched-in-time that once lived on earth 560 mil­lion to 542 mil­lion years ago.

Alice’s Restau­rant Bed

In the late 1960s, Amer­i­can folk singer Arlo Guthrie wrote a song titled ​‘Alice’s Restau­rant’ about being able to get any­thing you could ever want there to eat.

Fast for­ward to 2016, his song title was apt­ly used by lead­ing palaeon­tol­o­gist Dr Mary Dros­er and her team from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, River­side to describe a sig­nif­i­cant fos­sil bed unearthed in the hills of the for­mer Nilpe­na Pas­toral Sta­tion – now the nation­al park. 

Mary describes this fos­sil bed from a palaeontologist’s point of view to have every­thing you could ever want in a specimen.

Tech­ni­cians have been work­ing togeth­er to ensure the 1000 or so pieces that form Alice’s Restau­rant Bed come togeth­er inside the Black­smith’s Shop in a seam­less operation.

Dif­fer­ent thick­ness­es of the exca­vat­ed fos­sil pieces will be lev­elled using a spe­cial­ly designed table allow­ing for sec­tions to be ele­vat­ed before it’s grout­ed back into one sol­id lev­el artefact.

Curat­ed light­ing will pro­vide the best pos­si­ble view­ing con­di­tions to see an array of fos­sils and a spe­cial­ly designed plinth will sup­port the specimen.

This will be an all-acces­si­ble, vis­i­tor expe­ri­ence allow­ing every­one of all mobil­i­ty types to view fos­sils up-close.

Adja­cent to the Black­smith’s Shop are the for­mer shearer’s quar­ters which is cur­rent­ly used for researcher accom­mo­da­tion that work onsite. There are also plans for the for­mer wool­shed (oppo­site the Blacksmith’s Shop) to cre­ate an event and func­tion space in the future.

The Fos­sil Fields

As part of the new vis­i­tor expe­ri­ence, vis­i­tor who book a tour will be tak­en to the fos­sil fields which remains as an active research site. It’s here where many dis­cov­er­ies have occurred and where Alice’s Restau­rant Bed was unearthed. A 4 km road that leads from the Black­smith’s Shop to the fos­sil fields has been grad­ed for com­fort­able vehi­cle access to the site which will be con­duct­ed by tour oper­a­tors and researchers.

The fos­sil fields lie in Nilpena’s unas­sum­ing hills and where vis­i­tors will see where ear­li­est life was dis­cov­ered. Numer­ous fos­sil beds will explain the Edi­acaran life that exist­ed at Nilpe­na half a bil­lion years ago.

A Class 2, all-acces­si­ble trail has been devel­oped amongst the fos­sil fields which will allow those with mobil­i­ty impair­ments to see the major­i­ty of the site. The trail includes nodes of exca­vat­ed fos­sil beds, each with a unique sto­ry to be told.

The fos­sil fields are under secu­ri­ty surveillance.

At the entry to the fos­sil fields, the sur­round­ing land­scape is quite spec­tac­u­lar and pro­vides a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive of the Flinders Ranges. 

Rolling hills frame the dis­tant land­scape and at dusk, you’ll be able to cap­ture panoram­ic pho­tos of the ranges in all their pur­ple-hued glory. 

The Nilpe­na Gateway

The Nilpe­na gate­way – a strik­ing stone wall – is the entry area to wel­come all vis­i­tors. The gate­way pro­vides a unique pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty with panoram­ic views of the north­ern Flinders Ranges. The gate­way will be the offi­cial loca­tion for tour guides to meet vis­i­tors and escort them to the vis­i­tor precinct and fos­sil fields. Vis­i­tors are wel­come to stay in the near­by Ikara-Flinders Ranges Nation­al Park and sur­round­ing towns as camp­ing is not allowed on this site.

Beyond the gate­way, a 14 km jour­ney leads to the vis­i­tor precinct. The road tra­vers­es a pas­toral land­scape pass­ing through the pri­vate­ly owned Nilpe­na Pas­toral Sta­tion (a cur­rent work­ing cat­tle prop­er­ty) and the Nilpe­na Sta­tion home­stead (no pub­lic access). 

The envi­ron­ment is extreme­ly scenic and includes sev­er­al per­ma­nent springs and exten­sive creek lines that have cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance to the Adnya­math­anha people.

Work has been under­tak­en to reveg­e­tate the envi­ron­ment with over 1,500 tube­stock and 1.5 ha of direct seed­ing of plants endem­ic to the sur­round­ing land­scape. This has been made pos­si­ble through fund­ing pro­vid­ed by Flinders Ranges Edi­acara Foun­da­tion.

In and around the gate­way entry, around the built infra­struc­ture and along road­sides to the fos­sil fields appro­pri­ate land­scap­ing sym­pa­thet­ic to the envi­ron­ment has also been implemented.

Find more infor­ma­tion about vis­it­ing Nilpe­na Edi­acara Nation­al Park.