CLELAND CONSERVATION PARK with Keith Conlon
Its lower slopes are tickled by dress-circle suburbs, but it rises all the way to Mt Lofty Cleland Conservation Park is a precious green backdrop to the City. Its Central Wildlife Park has been upgraded recently and so I took a tour to suggest some Christmas holiday outings.
Holly is one of forty koalas in the Cleland colony - forty good reasons why one in three of the Park's visitors are overseas tourists. Rangers hand them gently over for a cuddle and a photograph and explain that they are related to wombats. They're definitely not bears. Apart from eating one to two kilograms of gum leaves every day, they don't do much else, sleeping nineteen hours each day. The koala lofts have been spruced up, and new paths and planting have gone in here and in several parts of the hillside park.
The last time I was in the bush aviary the Australian shrubs were infants, but in four years they've turned into a real hide and seek area. We spent a few minutes getting good shots of tiny finches and honeyeaters that are native to the Mt Lofty Ranges. By giving us the chance to see them and doing a lot more explaining in signage, Cleland is giving visitors a chance to connect with the conservation message.
The wildlife precinct of Cleland covers just thirty five hectares in almost a thousand. They stretch from Waterfall Gully right up to the Flinders Obelisk on the Mt Lofty summit, with Cleland Conservation Park spanning the hills face from Greenhill Road to Eagle on the Hill. If you get out onto the Long Ridge Track, there's a panoramic view that sits high above the city. Yet it is only nine kilometres as the Adelaide rosella flies from the GPO. Cleland nearly didn't happen as the whole face of the range here was up for sale in the 1920's for houses with a lofty address - Obelisk Estate.
Fortunately conservationist, Professor JB Cleland just hammered away about this being a "priceless heirloom" until it was bought by the state government in 1945. As the nephew of one of the great landowners of the nineteenth century (Sir Samuel Davenport) he wandered the slopes as a boy, roamed the sheoak ridges and relished the deep, cool and wet gullies like Wilson's bog.
Some of the flatter land up high was used for an experimental tobacco plantation in the 1930's, and the clearings are now part of the fenced Wildlife Park. Wetland lakes within it have new boardwalks among newly grown sedges and reeds. Several species of native duck have made them home.
Mt Lofty and Mt Bonython are two resistant survivors of the ancient mountain range, and according to the Kuarna aboriginal people of the Adelaide plains, they are Yurridla, the ears of their fallen ancestral being, Yurabilla. In Cleland Wildlife Park, his story and those of the animals are told on the Yurridla Trail walks. Held as guided tours on Wednesdays and Sundays, they require bookings.
Almost everyday, school groups and a United Nations of visitors take a break on the lawns for a lesson in an outdoor classroom. Education Officer Ben Luxton draws a crowd and gives his volunteers a long green surprise as they handle an olive python about two metres long.
If you'd rather learn about marsupials like the once plentiful bettongs and bandicoots, you might see one of these rabbit-size creatures during the day, but at night they are easily seen as they forage nocturnally. Cleland's nightwalks take you into hills as they were before land clearing and cats and dogs. It's a fascinating night with a totally takeaway message about conservation.
The pushers and wheelchairs friendly upgraded paths in the Wildlife zone take you through the plentiful inquisitive emus and lazing grey kangaroos, and through a gate into the endangered. A mini Flinders Ranges rockpile is home to a colony of yellow footed rock wallabies. Cleland is part of Operation Bounceback, which is ridding their natural habitat of foxs and goats and boosting their breeding numbers.
Back in the stylish new enterance and cafe area for a bite, we were joined by a flock of multi-coloured lorikeets. They're fed a couple of times each day on the lawns outside. Down at the lake, excellent catering for the feathered residents there too. Young darters and black cormorants competed with a flock of voracious pelicans for a fish feed from the keeper. They in turn attract a camera-clicking crowd. In the coming summer holidays, Grubs Up is a program that gets your family out to the keepers' feeding roster.
Our quick survey of the wildlife park certainly reinforced the idea that Cleland is an entertaining and informative outdoor destination for your holiday list.
Discover Postcard's last visit to Cleland Wildlife Park.
Details
Cleland Wildlife Park
Summit Road
Mt Lofty Stirling
South Australia 5152Ph. 08 8130 9005
fax: 08 8370 9623
web: www.cleland.sa.gov.auOpen daily 9.30 am to 5pm (closed Christmas Day)
