Portal:Geography/Featured article/July, 2010

Waterfall Gully is an outer suburb of the South Australian capital city of Adelaide. It is located in the foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges around 5 km east-south-east of Adelaide's central business district (CBD). For the most part, the suburb encompasses one long gully with First Creek at its centre and Waterfall Gully Road running adjacent to the creek. At the southern end of the gully is First Falls, the waterfall for which the suburb was named. Part of the City of Burnside, Waterfall Gully is bounded to the north by the suburb of Burnside, from the north-east to south-east by Cleland Conservation Park (part of the suburb of Greenhill), to the south by Crafers West, and to the west by Leawood Gardens and Mount Osmond.

Historically, Waterfall Gully was first explored by European settlers in the early to mid- 1800's, and quickly became a popular location for tourists and picnickers. The government chose to retain control over portions of Waterfall Gully until 1884, when they agreed to place the land under the auspices of the City of Burnside. 28 years later the government took back the management of the southern part of Waterfall Gully, designating it as South Australia's first National Pleasure Resort. Today this area remains under State Government control, and in 1972 the Waterfall Gully Reserve, as it was then known, became part of the larger Cleland Conservation Park.

Over the years Waterfall Gully has been extensively logged, and early agricultural interests saw the cultivation of a variety of introduced species as crops, along with the development of local market gardens and nurseries. Attempts to mine the area were largely unsuccessful, but the region housed one of the state's earliest water-powered mills, and a weir erected in the early 1880s provided for part of the City of Burnside's water supply. Today the suburb consists primarily of private residences and parks.