The Parklands - Secrets and Shifts
with Keith Conlon

At Light's Vision, overlooking the city from North Adelaide, is the good Colonel pointing proudly at his chosen site? Or is there a touch of acquisition there? "Hands off the Parklands"!

Even Light's statue is a symbol of the theme throughout our final Postcards program for 1999....shifts and secrets in The Parklands. It spent thirty years in Victoria Square before coming up to Montefiore Hill. They were marked "public ground, never to be built upon" on the plains. The idea that Light is wagging his finger protectively over the park areas encircling Adelaide comes from a creative writing thesis by Ray Tindale. Thanks for the ideas for this week's colonian ramble, Ray.

Even before we depart Montefiore Hill, the shifting use of the Parklands is obvious. Tennis, for instance, came to Memorial Drive by the Torrens well into the Victoria era. Now, the paint is just drying a big new tennis centre building. The public golf course over the highway up from the Victoria Bridge is another sign of movement. Governor Fergusson introduced what bemused spectators called "the Scottish disease" in the parklands near the Victoria Park racecourse site about 130 years ago. The courses in the north parklands, with their city skyline as a backdrop, began in the 1890's.

Light's Parklands in their fabulous Figure eight shape round North and South Adelaide, came to more than 900 hectares - and now they're down to 700 hectares. That makes for a lot of shifts and secrets.

There's a mysterious octagonal stone and brick structure on the edge near the Hackney Road/North Terrace intersection, for instance. A couple of weekends back Olympic hopeful equestrians took their charges through a copse of she-oaks nearby. They couldn't have done that until a few years ago, as there was a rambling clutter of sheds in an E & WS depot over this area. The building left behind is the original Valve House for Adelaide's first reticulated water supply, piped in from the first reservoir in the Torrens gorge.

Before that, water carters pulled their loads out of the Torrens, a river increasingly known for its stinking pollution. Adelaide was the "stench capital of Australia" before the pioneering deep drainage went in during the 1880's. What was that to do with the Parklands? The answer lies on their western edge where Port Road, as it comes down from the Newmarket Hotel corner, should dissect green fields. Instead, on one side, there's a cyclone fenced water depot. It was grabbed "temporarily" by the government way back when they needed somewhere to store all those new pipes...six hectares of somewhere!

Most of our shifts and secrets this week, however, are in a walkable arc starting in that eastern corner by the old Valve House. On the city edge there, the Parklands meet that memorable two-storey faÁade of the East End Market, with the wedding cake triple-storeyed Botanic Hotel on the North Terrace corner.

According to Colonel Light's plan, we should be able to look out from its iron lace bedecked verandahs and see across parklands all the way to the Torrens...over "public land, never to be built upon".

Instead, of course, we see a huge city complex, the Royal Adelaide Hospital. At least it has some reason for being in the Parklands, because Light included several "reserves" in his city plan, including one for a hospital. It was, however, in the dip between North Terrace and where Rundle Road now splits the park. After some morning rain, we spotted some ducks enjoying a temporary pond, and so they made the point visually on Postcards that this was always swampy ground, and so it's no wonder the hospital site was never taken up.

We walked into the Botanic Garden over North Terrace to pursue our next shift and secret. The whole Botanic Garden has been on the move, in fact....and four times no less. Light charted an island in the Torrens to the west where Bonython Park now greens the Parklands, but it was subject to flooding. A second sight near the gaol was deemed unsatisfactory, and so the First Director began a garden in 1840 straddling the Torrens near the Albert Bridge of today, by the zoo. Unfortunately, the colony was bankrupted within a year and he was retrenched.

The current site was first opened to the public in 1857. Again, however, it has not been without periodic pushing and shoving round the boundaries. The RAH took a bit of land, but then the Botanic Hotel was declared beyond the garden. The gatekeeper's cottage on North Terrace is a clue to a much bigger shift on its eastern side. On the rise there was a major institution, the Lunatic Asylum, and its extensive stone buildings were not demolished until the 1930's.

The shifts are ongoing here, too. The old MTT Depot is covered in new roses on one side and grapevines-to-come on the other, as the new National Wine Centre will soon be built in this corner of the Parklands.

Within a couple of years there will be an avenue taking your eye from one corner of the Botanic Garden right through to the imposing classical columns of the Barr-Smith Library in the grounds of the University of Adelaide. Its crowded campus is, again, on "public ground, never to be built upon". Yeah, right!!!!

It was largely green, at least, until the 1930's. The Jubilee Oval site is underneath the Union Hall and the new biosciences block under construction. It was the home of Adelaide's agricultural shows until they moved to their Wayville grounds.

And they were the destination of one of the great shifts and secrets in this part of the Parklands. Between the Parade Ground and the back of the Government House domain, there ran a trainline. Until 1927, you could catch the train from the Jubilee Oval back under a culvert under King William Road and through where the Festival Centre now sits.

When the line was closed, the Adelaide City Council grabbed the strip to add to Elder park, to gain a little bit of Parklands back. It is a never ending story.

Sources

Lights Fancy
creative writing thesis (unpublished), Ray Tindale
and some good holiday reading ideas (Christmas presents too)

After Light
A history of the City of Adelaide and its Council
Peter Morton, Wakefield Press

Heritage of the City of Adelaide, An Illustrated Guide
Corporation of the City of Adelaide

Adelaide, a Source of Difference
Derek Whitelock, Savvas Publishing

Festive Greetings

From the Postcards team, festive greetings and thanks for your enthusiasm and interest for Postcards on TV and on the Web. We've had a record-breaking year on both counts.

For those of you getting some time off, there are a host of ideas about enjoying South Australia in these web pages.

Until our new season in 2000, enjoy!!!!!