As soon as we stepped out of the car at Mount Lofty Summit in Cleland National Park we smelled the eucalyptus coming from the predominant trees in the area.

Mount Lofty provides a wonderful view over Adelaide and the adjacent ocean.

At the lookout Flinders Column towers over the viewing platform. It was built in honour of Matthew Flinders, Commander of the „Investigator“, who from Kangaroo Island, discovered and named Mount Lofty in 1802. It is located in the Adelaide Hills region at 710 meters above sea level.

From the summit it is just a short drive to the upper car park of Mount Lofty Botanical Gardens. The park is dedicated to cultivation and display of cool- climate plants from all around the world.

We made our descent on steeply sloping terrain through various vegetational segments of the park. We strolled through a Fern Gully, through Rhododendron Gardens and the South East Asian Gully all the way down to the lake that is used as irrigation system. The area around the lake features many plants that felt like being home to us.

Mount Lofty Botanical Gardens is the most beautiful botanical garden that I‘ve ever seen and, in my eyes, should be high up on the things to do when visiting Adelaide. I wished we could come back through the different seasons to see the gardens change.

You can hike up to the Mount Lofty Summit from Waterfalls Gully. Having done quite a bit of walking in the Botanical Gardens we took the car there instead and made it our last stop for the day. The next day we‘d be off to Tasmania.