of the war effort diverting supplies and personnel from the Emergency Fire Service. Significant floods occurred in 1889 and 1931, and, on the night of 7 November 2005, Waterfall Gully was one of several areas in Adelaide to experience severe flooding. Waterfall Gully was one of the hardest hit suburbs: Bob Stevenson, Duty Officer of the State Emergency Service (SES), commented that "There's an area called Waterfall Gully Road, in the foothills, where one of the creeks comes down, and there's quite a few houses affected there ... there was 40 or so houses affected on that one road alone." Properties were flooded, two bridges nearly collapsed, and of road was washed away. Burnside council workers, the Country Fire Service (CFS) and the SES repaired the initial damage on the night while reconstruction of infrastructure commenced in late November. Much of the road had been inaccessible, and the suburb was closed except to residents and emergency workers for the remainder of the month. Geography Waterfall Gully is situated at an average elevation of above sea level, in an area of . Its most notable geographical features are its gully and waterfall. Langman Reserve, a large local park, is from the start of Waterfall Gully Road while much of the north-eastern side of the gully is part of Cleland National Park. Adjoining Waterfall Gully, away, is Chambers Gully, which used to function as a land-fill, but has in the past decade been reclaimed as a park through volunteer work. It contains a number of old ruins, walking trails, and springs and is home to a significant number of native species. Since European Settlement the native plant life has been considerably affected, with the native manna gum and blue gum woodlands being largely cleared for agricultural uses. The large amount of non-native vegetation in the gully is predominantly the result of the early agriculture, although some species were introduced by accident. Introduced species include olive trees, hawthorn, fennel and blackberry. With the reduction of native flora, exotic fauna have flourished around the Waterfall Gully region. These include rabbits, blackbirds and starlings. However, not all of the native wildlife has been lost—bats (in particular, Gould's wattled bat), can be found in the area, as can superb fairy-wrens and Adelaide rosellas, and a large number of unique Australian animals such as kangaroos, koalas and possums can be spotted on some of the walking trails.