Scores of decorated rocks are scattered throughout the Fleurieu Peninsula waiting to be found. 

It’s the game that brings families and communities together for the rollicking adventure of a good old fashioned scavenger hunt, but with the modern advantage of social media to connect people, places and … rocks. 

The craze of hiding painted rocks for others to unearth first swept through South Australia in 2017 with the launch of the Facebook group SA Rocks. Today this hide and seek game is still thriving and the Facebook group has boomed to more than 20,000 members.

With adult supervision, it’s the perfect activity to pull kids away from screens and encourage creativity and nature play throughout the school holidays.

For those who are new to the game, this is how it works: 

• Use smooth, dry and natural rocks. Please be careful not to remove rocks from protected areas such as conservation parks, nature reserves or places of cultural significance. Natural pebbles can be picked up from your local garden centre.

• Let imagination and inspiration flow as you decorate your rocks with acrylic paints.

• Use a permanent marker to write ‘SA Rocks’ with the Facebook icon and the line ‘keep or re-hide’ on the back of your rocks along with your postcode.

• Seal your rocks to protect the paint from running in the rain. Sealants are available from all good hardware stores. 

• Join the Facebook group, SA Rocks, and post a picture of your delightful creations and where you will drop them. Include the postcode and suburb in your post. 

• Keep an eye on the comments to see who finds your rocks, and follow their journey as their finders re-hide them. It’s exciting to see how far your rocks travel!

• To make tracking easier, you can search the Facebook group for rocks dropped or found in your area.

• If you find someone else’s decorated rock, post a picture with the postcode and suburb where you found it, and then re-hide the rock somewhere new so the treasure hunt continues.

And that’s it: paint them, drop them, find them, re-hide them.

The Fleurieu is an ideal setting to play this game with your freshly painted rocks. Some fun locations for rock hiding include the old fisherman’s caves at Port Willunga, sections of the Heysen Trail, the popular bike track the Shiraz Trail which runs from Willunga to McLaren Vale, the Hart Road Wetlands in Aldinga, and Victor Harbor’s iconic Granite Island Circuit walking trail.

So dig out the smocks and paintbrushes, get crafting, and venture into nature’s playground this summer.