Entering Nilpena Ediacara National Park is not possible as the park has yet to open. The National Parks and Wildlife Service SA announced in July 2022 that the park will open in the first half of 2023, but an exact date has yet to be revealed. See the South Australian Parks website for up-to-date information.
Nilpena Ediacara National Park is a national park in the South Australian Outback. It's one of South Australia's newest national parks, only proclaimed in June 2021, and will remain closed until early 2023 until visitor facilities are built. The park includes the former Ediacara Conservation Park as well as another 60,000 hectares and is home to some of the earliest animal life anywhere found in the world.
Nilpena Ediacara National Park is rather one unique park, home to fossils from over 500 million years ago — long before dinosaurs roamed the planet. Fossils here have helped discover earliest complex animal life on Earth.
The Ediacara Conservation Park was proclaimed on 26 April 2007 over land of what had been declared as a conservation reserve in 1993 and as a fossil reserve in 1958. In March 2019, the Government of South Australia purchased 60,000 hectares (150,000 acres) of adjacent land from the Nilpena Pastoral Company to enlarge the conservation park by ten times, and so the park now extends as far as Lake Torrens National Park.
In June 2021, the entire area was reclassified and proclaimed as Nilpena Ediacara National Park. A visitor hub and Ediacara Fossil experience were developed in 2021, expected to open in early 2023.
From the South Australian capital of Adelaide, head north on the M2 Northern Connector and then exit onto the A1 Port Wakefield Rd. Continue on that road up for about three hours up until just before Port Augusta, where you'll turn onto B83 Flinders Ranges Way, continue for about 220 km. Then once you're at Beltana Station, you will see a huge gateway welcoming you to the park. It's expected to be completed by early 2023.
Access to the park will also only be done via guided tours. See § Get around for more about that.
Once the park opens, getting around the park can only be done via a guided tour. How to book the guided tours isn't exactly known yet at this point in time, but it's likely that will come out once the park open's to the public. What is known however, is that there is a <abbr title="parking lot / parkade">carpark</abbr>, and from the gateway, access to the new visitor facilities will only be done via guided tours.
As you will not be able to freely undertake recreation, being able to eat only lies with the tour. It's not known whether there's be anything to eat along the tour or not at this point in time. If that is the case, the nearest can be found in Leigh Creek.
Environment SA and the National Parks and Wildlife Service South Australia have made it clear that there will be no accommodation facilities, nor will there be any sort of recreation facilities in order to protect the area when the park opens. The nearest accommodation can be found at Leigh Creek which is about a 30 minutes drive from the park.