Looking south-west across Second Creek at Norwood showing the Baptist Church on the left which was erected in 1870. The land in the foreground became a densely built up residential area. Much of the Creek now passes underground through tunnels.

Norwood is now a busy inner suburb of Adelaide but this photograph, taken in the 1870s, shows it was not always the case. When Edward Stephens reminisced about the days after his arrival in the colony in 1839 he described the land of Kensington, Kent Town and Norwood as follows:
'To the south of the grog shanty in Kensington, of which I have written, there was a nice piece of cleared land - in fact this was about the only well cleared land in the village. Norwood and Kent Town were unknown then. The site of the present Norwood was then a magnificent gum forest, with an undergrowth of kangaroo grass, too high in places for a man to see over ; in fact persons lost their way in going from Adelaide to Kensington in those days, through attempting a short or near cut across the country.'

Second Creek is one the five main tributaries of the River Torrens; these flow across the plains east of Adelaide and First, Second and Third Creeks have been largely diverted into tunnels or concrete channels, and built over. Some sections of these creeks flow through private property.