Tips & Articles

Kelly Hill Caves: Tour Times, Fees and What to Expect

TL;DR: Kelly Hill Caves on Kangaroo Island reopened in December 2023 with a new audio-visual guided tour. The tour fee is $31 per adult, the park is open daily 9am to 5pm, and bookings are essential. There’s no self-guided access to the cave.

If you visited Kelly Hill Caves before 2023, the tour you did no longer exists.

The caves reopened in December 2023 with a rebuilt experience: new interpretive signage above ground, and a narrated audio-visual tour underground with a dynamic light display through the caverns. Returning visitors get something genuinely different, which is unusual for a cave system that hasn’t changed in two million years.

Here’s how a visit works now.

What the tour involves

The tour runs in two parts.

Above ground first. A guided walk covering the history of the caves, how they were found, and how the dune system that formed them works, with new interpretive signage installed as part of the 2023 reopening. This sets up what you’re about to walk into rather than dropping you straight down a staircase.

Then underground. You descend into the cavern system, and the tour moves through chambers of stalactites, stalagmites, helictites and columns. The narration and lighting are the new part: the display is timed to the commentary and lights sections of the cave progressively rather than flooding the whole chamber.

The formations themselves are the point. Helictites in particular, the ones that grow sideways and against gravity, are fragile enough that a single touch ends them, which is why the whole system is guided-access only.

The history of the caves

Around two million years ago, sea levels rose and fell repeatedly, exposing and covering the continental shelf. During the exposed periods, wind carried calcareous shell fragments off the seabed and piled them into dunes along Kangaroo Island’s south and west coasts.

Those dunes hardened into porous limestone. Rainwater, mildly acidic, then percolated through it for a very long time, dissolving passages into an underground labyrinth of sinkholes and caverns thought to extend for kilometres.

What you walk through is a small, accessible fraction of that system.

Booking and tickets

Tour fee	$31.00 per adult
Opening hours	9:00am to 5:00pm daily
Access	Guided tour only, no self-guided entry
Bookings	Essential
Booking cut-off	Two hours before the scheduled tour time
Location	Kelly Hill Conservation Park, South Coast Road, Kangaroo Island
Distance from Adelaide	About 250km plus the ferry crossing

The two hour booking cut-off is the detail worth planning around. Bookings close two hours before each tour time, and that’s deliberate: Kangaroo Island is bigger than people expect, and the drive from Kingscote or Penneshaw to the western end takes real time. The cut-off exists so people aren’t booking a tour they can’t physically reach.

Book the day before if you can. Turning up hoping for a spot is how people miss out, especially over summer and school holidays.

Practical tips

The staircase is steep. Access to the cavern is via a fixed staircase with a decent number of steps down and back up. Anyone with knee or mobility issues should think carefully.

The ceilings are low in places. You’ll be ducking. Tall visitors, watch your head, and wear something you don’t mind brushing against damp limestone.

The audio-visual component uses changing light. If you have photosensitive epilepsy, mention it when booking or speak to staff before the tour starts.

Temperature. Caves stay cool year-round. Take a light layer even on a hot Kangaroo Island day.

Combine it with Flinders Chase. Kelly Hill sits a short drive from Flinders Chase National Park at the island’s western end. Remarkable Rocks, Admirals Arch and Kelly Hill Caves all sit within the same corner of the island, which makes a full western-end day easy to build.

Fitting it into a Kangaroo Island trip

The western end of Kangaroo Island is a long way from the ferry terminal, so getting to Flinders Chase requires some planning. The journey from Penneshaw to Flinders Chase takes around two hours each way, before you’ve even allowed time for stops and exploring.

A day trip is possible, but it means an early start and a fairly tight schedule, particularly if you need to work around ferry times and booking cut-offs. Plan your day carefully before deciding how to fit it in. Kelly Hill Caves isn’t included in our current itineraries, but you can explore our other Kangaroo Island tour itineraries for alternative ways to experience the island.

Frequently asked questions

The tour fee is $31.00 per adult. Concession and child rates may apply, so check when booking.

Yes. Bookings are essential, and booking closes two hours before each scheduled tour time to allow for travel across the island.

No. The cave is only accessible on a guided tour. There’s no self-guided entry. The surrounding conservation park has walking trails you can access independently.

The caves reopened in December 2023 with a new audio-visual tour featuring narration and a dynamic light display, plus new interpretive signage on the guided above-ground walk that now starts the experience.

Allow around an hour for the combined above-ground walk and underground tour. Confirm the current tour length when you book.

It’s a developed show cave with formed walkways, not a squeeze through crawlspaces, but there are low ceilings in sections and it is genuinely underground. If confined spaces are a real problem for you, this isn’t the right activity.

The park is open daily, 9am to 5pm. Tours run at set times within those hours and must be booked in advance.