Morialta Falls Conservation Park is just outside the Eastern suburbs of Adelaide and it only took us 25 minutes to get there from our base in Parkside. We went to the park twice – once in June, and once in August. Both times we were surprised by how busy it was – it’s a very popular park!

Inside the park there is a deep gorge with three waterfalls, which are imaginatively named ‘First Falls’, ‘Second Falls’, and ‘Third Falls’. There is also a large cave called ‘Giant’s Cave’ and various walking trails and viewing platforms for visiting the waterfalls. The most popular walk is the relatively flat walk to First Falls which is only 1km each way.

On both of our visits we started with a nice coffee by the creek next to the car park and then walked the trail to see First Falls. There was a bit more water in the waterfall in August than there was in June. On our first visit we also went to look at Giant’s Cave which is accessed by going up some steps from the First Falls trail.

After lunch on our first visit we walked the Sec­ond Falls Hike (5.3km loop), and after lunch on our second visit we walked the Third Falls Hike (7.3km loop). There were some shared sections of track between these two hikes as they both went in a loop around the canyon.

The longer Third Falls Hike went deeper into the canyon to visit Third Falls – but also visited Second Falls. However, as the two walks went in different directions around the canyon, the views and light were very different even on the sections of track that were part of both walks.