Dry Creek or Dry Creek Drain is a seasonal stream in

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

Whitworth (1866) p. 69 which passes through the

Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...

suburbs of Wynn Vale,

Modbury Modbury is a large village, ecclesiastical parish, civil parish and former manor in the South Hams district of the county of Devon in England. Today due to its large size it is generally referred to as a "town" although the parish council has ...

, Walkley Heights and Pooraka. The nearby suburb of Dry Creek and

Dry Creek railway station Dry Creek railway station is located on the Gawler railway line, Gawler line. Situated in the inner northern Adelaide suburb of Dry Creek, South Australia, Dry Creek, it is from Adelaide railway station, Adelaide station. History Dry Creek ...

are named after the stream.

Description

In season Dry Creek flows from its source near Yatala Vale in the

Mount Lofty Ranges The Mount Lofty Ranges are a range of mountains in the Australian state of South Australia which for a small part of its length borders the east of Adelaide. The part of the range in the vicinity of Adelaide is called the Adelaide Hills and d ...

to the

Barker Inlet The Barker Inlet is a tidal inlet of the Gulf St Vincent in Adelaide, South Australia, named after Captain Collet Barker who first sighted it in 1831. It contains one of the southernmost mangrove forests in the world, a dolphin sanctuary, ...

of the

Gulf St Vincent Gulf St Vincent, sometimes referred to as St Vincent Gulf, St Vincent's Gulf or Gulf of St Vincent, is the eastern of two large inlets of water on the southern coast of Australia, in the state of South Australia, the other being the larger Sp ...

via a manufactured drain near Globe Derby Park. The flooded state of the plain either side of Dry Creek after heavy rain is presumed to be the source of the local place name 'Yatala' (as in Hundred of Yatala and Yatala Vale). The name is likely derived from the indigenous word 'yertalla', which means "water running by the side of a river". Dry Creek is mostly dry in summer and flows through a deep

gully A gully is a landform A landform is a land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. They may be natural or may be anthropogenic (caused or influenced by human activity). Landforms together make up a given ter ...

at the rear of the prison with outcrops of exposed

pre-Cambrian The Precambrian ( ; or pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pC, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the ...

rocks that were extensively

quarried A quarry is a type of open-pit mining, open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock (geology), rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some juri ...

as part of prison activity.Lewis (1985) pp. 174–175 Yatala Labour Prison was established in the 1854 next to Dry Creek and was alternately known at the time as the ''Dry Creek Prison'' or the ''Stockade''. The rock from the quarry was transported to Adelaide via the Stockade railway station (opened in 1857; closed 1961), with the area around the station and quarry being since redeveloped as the Stockade Botanical Park. A 14 km long walkway, known as Dry Creek River Trail, runs along the creek in the Dry Creek Reserve.

Notes

References

* * {{Rivers of South Australia Rivers of Adelaide