Windback Wednesday - Waterfall Gully
Almost immediately after the beginning of British colonisation, Waterfall Gully became a popular picnicking destination. In high demand as a recreation and tourism destination, key land parcels in Waterfall Gully were held by the State Government, until they agreed to hand over caretaking responsibilities to the City of Burnside in 1884. Twenty-eight years later, in 1912, the Government took back control of a southern portion of Waterfall Gully to be re-purposed as South Australia’s first ‘National Pleasure Resort’. This Government department was responsible for building the Waterfall Gully tearooms, later called the Waterfall Gully Kiosk, and now known as Utopia @ Waterfall Gully.
The Waterfall Gully Kiosk was designed by Adelaide-based architect Alfred Conrad, who was also the architectural mind behind Hans Heysen’s studio and the West Coffee Palace. Conrad designed the tearooms in the style of a Swiss Chalet, and the building still bears many of Conrad’s original features, including leadlight windows, hand-laid parquetry flooring, exposed timber beams, and stone fireplace. The Waterfall Gully Kiosk is the only remaining 19th century tearoom in a national park, and the only Australian restaurant set at the base of a waterfall.
Photograph: Waterfall Gully Kiosk c.1936. Courtesy of the State Library of South Australia B 11651.
