Best Things to Do with Kids in Adelaide: Family Activities and Attractions

Adelaide's family activity landscape punches well above its weight for a city of 1.4 million, with the combination of free museum entry, beach access via the Glenelg tram, the Adelaide Zoo's extraordinary Giant Panda programme, and the natural environments of the Adelaide Hills and Gulf beaches creating a family activity variety that much larger cities cannot match for cost-effectiveness.

Adelaide Zoo and the Giant Pandas — the Adelaide Zoo (Frome Road, adjacent to the CBD) is Australia's only zoo with Giant Pandas, making it one of the most unique zoo experiences in the southern hemisphere. Wang Wang and Fu Ni have been at Adelaide Zoo since 2009 and remain one of the zoo's primary drawcards. The zoo's biodiversity programme and the Sumatran Tiger enclosure round out a genuinely impressive collection for a city-centre zoo.

South Australian Museum — the South Australian Museum on North Terrace (free entry) has one of the world's finest collections of Pacific and indigenous Australian cultural artefacts, the opal collection (South Australia produces 90% of the world's opals), and the natural history galleries with Australia's finest collection of megafauna skeletons — genuinely impressive for children who have been studying Australian prehistory.

Glenelg Beach via tram — the tram ride from Victoria Square to Glenelg Beach (30 minutes, free in the city section) followed by a beach day at Glenelg is Adelaide's classic family outing. The Glenelg Foreshore's Magic Mountain amusements, the Glenelg jetty, and the calm gulf swimming conditions provide a full day family destination accessible without a car.

Cleland Wildlife Park — the Cleland Wildlife Park in the Adelaide Hills (20 minutes from the CBD, at the top of the Norton Summit Road) has free-roaming kangaroos and wallabies, koala encounters (for a modest fee), and wombat and Tasmanian devil viewing in well-designed enclosures, all set in the beautiful native bushland of the Adelaide Hills.

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