St Kilda is a coastal township, now classed as a suburb, 21 kilometres (13 miles) north-north-west of the centre of Adelaide, capital city of South Australia.

St Kilda is an internationally recognised bird-watching area: more than 100 species[note 1] of birds feed in and around the mudflats, salt lagoons, mangroves and seagrass beds.

The suburb is home to a number of tourist attractions, including an adventure playground, tram museum, mangrove forest walk and an abundance of birdlife.

They made use of the natural resources; for example, they would trap and spear fish (kuya), lobsters (ngaultaltya) and birds (parriparu), and gathered bird's eggs, black river mussels (kakirra, species Alathyria jacksoni), [8] periwinkle (kulutunumi), river crawfish (kunggurla – probably common yabby),[9] clams, native mud oysters and blue swimmer crabs.

[12] Settler fishermen had established huts on three low-lying islands, covered in shell grit and saltbush and surrounded by mangrove and samphire swamps by 1865.

By the 1890s, people who lived in Adelaide were visiting the islands, attracted to the supposedly curative properties of the mangrove mud and using the beach for bathing and fishing for crabs.

[13][citation needed] [4]: 4–7  An early settler in the area was John Harvey, founder of the regional town of Salisbury, 10 kilometres (6 miles) inland.

He gave the locality its name since it reminded him of the isolated St Kilda archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, which contains the westernmost islands of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

[13] The St Kilda Hotel, built out of limestone obtained from the hills 15 kilometres (9 miles) eastwards, opened in 1898 with Matthias Lucas as the first publican.

[4]: 9–11 A major change to the landscape took place when construction of large salt evaporation lagoons began in 1935,[note 2] employing 600 workers to dig them out by hand.

It has a "pirate" shipwreck, three-storey castle, tunnelled slides on a hill, flying foxes, a "bouncy boomerang" and numerous other pieces of play equipment.

[21] The entrance fee gives access to unlimited free rides on an electric tram along a 1.6 kilometres (1.0 mile) line that runs between the museum and the adventure playground.

[4]: 28–29  [note 4] The trail meanders through tidal samphire saltmarsh flats, mangroves and seagrass channels to a lookout that provides elevated views across the Barker Inlet.

[citation needed] The coast side of the mangroves is bounded by extensive salt evaporation ponds leased for industrial use by the South Australian Government.

The Department of the Premier and Cabinet is responsible for regulating the salt fields under the Mining Act 1972, which includes a requirement for environment protection and rehabilitation.

[30] In 2020, a South Australian government inspection observed that significant areas of mangrove had died off and that brine had recently been pumped into the saltfields by plant management company, Buckland Dry Creek Pty Ltd.

The abundance of birdlife attracts birds of prey: swamp harriers, collared sparrowhawks, black-shouldered kites, kestrels and little falcons are all seen in the skies over St Kilda.

[citation needed] The following graphs show climate data for RAAF Base Edinburgh, 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) inland from St Kilda.