Why visiting Nilpena Ediacara National Park should be on your bucket list

If you haven’t heard of Nilpena Ediacara National Park and have been dreaming of South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, now is the time to visit.

Members of the public can visit ‘Nilpena’, as it is commonly referred to, via guided tours.

This national park is unlike any other in South Australia, possibly even the world, and will profile the state’s outback region in a whole new light.

Here’s why it needs to be added to your bucket list:

1. It has international historical significance

On the western fringes of the Flinders Ranges, about 500 km north of Adelaide, roughly 90,000 hectares of land has been protected as a national park. National parks are areas of significance relating to wildlife, natural features, landscapes and especially for our Aboriginal and cultural heritage.

Nilpena Ediacara National Park has all of this and more. In fact, Nilpena is at the centre of a nomination currently being prepared to submit a bid for World Heritage listing for the Flinders Ranges.

Something that makes the park extra special is the resounding fact that Nilpena Ediacara National Park is the place where evidence of the emergence of Earth’s earliest complex animal life has been discovered.

We’re talking pre-dinosaurs or even pre-land plants. The likes of NASA have been backing the research at Nilpena for some time now, through the University of California, Riverside, to understand how animal life evolves on a planet.

2. It’s an active research site

A research project is currently underway at Nilpena that will validate computer algorithms that examine fossil evidence and match what has been discovered in Nilpena’s ancient seafloor.

Nilpena is an active research site and being able to observe and understand what is happening is all part of the national park's new fossil experience.

During a visit to the park, it’s very likely that you’ll be witnessing ground-breaking research happening that will be of benefit to the world as we know it.

3. It’s home to the crème de la crème of fossil beds

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.

Now known as Alice’s Restaurant Bed, it is the focal point of the new fossil experience. It showcases etched-in-time evidence of multicellular animal life that lived on earth 560 million to 542 million years ago.

More than 40 fossil species have been recorded at Nilpena, with others first discovered in the nearby Ediacaran Hills, which is also in the national park, back in the 1940s by local geologist Reg Sprigg.

His discovery was so significant that a fossil was named in his honour (Spriggina) and has become the South Australian fossil emblem. The Ediacaran geological period of time was named after the location of this discovery.

4. It has several unique – and famously named – specimens

Now that the national park is open, you can see Spriggina specimens and discover other unique ones as well.

There’s the Attenborities janeae, named after Sir David Attenborough, who has been to Nilpena and documented about first life at Nilpena a few years ago, and Obamus coronatus, named after President Barack Obama for his commitment to science research.

5. It has film-worthy landscapes

The leaseholders of the former pastoral station took careful consideration to protect the surrounding landscape that now forms the national park.

Evidence of the Adnyamathanha people, the Traditional Owners of the land, exists in the form of ash and charcoal middens around Nilpena’s permanent springs.

In what seems dry and rugged outback, seeing water flowing is quite captivating.

The park’s unique landscape is probably why film makers continue to use Nilpena as a film set.

When can I visit, and how?

The park officially opened on 27 April 2023.

• 1946 – Fossils first discovered
• 2007 – Ediacara Conservation Park proclaimed to protect fossil site (2,224 ha)
• 2021 – an area of Nilpena Pastoral Station added (total approx. 66,000 ha)
• 2023 – Nilpena Ediacara National Park opened, public tours available
• 2025 – remainder of Nilpena Pastoral Station added to the park (total approx. 90,000 ha)

A stone gateway welcomes visitors to the park and can be seen from the Outback Highway, 30 minutes north of Parachilna. The gateway is the welcome point for all visitors to enter the park and has ample parking.

Please note, the park is closed annually from 1 December to 15 March due to extreme summer heat and fire risk.

This is a site of huge international significance and to ensure it’s protected, you’ll only be able to visit by booking a guided tour.

Gaining access to the park feels like a privilege but in fact, once you understand the importance of the site and what it contains, you quickly realise it’s a necessary measure.

What is in the visitor precinct?

From the gateway, a 14 km journey as part of the guided tour will lead you to the new visitor precinct.

The visitor precinct itself is made up of three heritage buildings of the former pastoral station.

The old Blacksmith’s Shop has been repurposed as a state-of-the-art interpretation centre.

The centre has been created by a specialist project team: including everyone from stonemasons to audio-visual technicians to furniture craftsman and finally palaeontologists.

Together they have created a one-of-kind fossil experience centred around Alice’s Restaurant Bed, which required the careful installation of its 200 or so pieces.

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

Different thicknesses of the excavated fossil pieces were levelled before being grouted back into one solid artefact.

It is an accessible visitor experience allowing everyone of all mobility types to view fossils up-close.

The adjacent shearer’s quarters provides accommodation for researchers that work on-site. Plans for the former woolshed, opposite the Blacksmith’s Shop, present a unique opportunity for an event and function space in the future.

Find out more about visiting Nilpena Ediacara National Park at the National Parks website.