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'The parks are the pride and glory of this city—the best and greatest asset it has, or ever can have. To every generation they are becoming more valuable. Let us, therefore, keep them inviolate, keep them intact, keep them sacred from the hands of the despoiler.'
Lewis Cohen, Deputy Mayor of Adelaide, 1910 |
A wide range of sporting clubs, government departments and institutions have claimed the right to use areas that once were Park Lands.
Sporting clubs: In 1847, the horse racing fraternity was the first to obtain a leased home in the Park Lands, on what is now known as Victoria Park. The South Australian Jockey Club held its last meeting there on 14 December 2007 and its lease ran out on 28 April 2008. Fortunately, all attempts over the years to fence it off had been thwarted, and it was one of the few racecourses in the world to allow free public access. However, there is no free public access during commercial car-racing events that recently have taken over the park and large parts of the eastern Park Lands each year. Cricket was the second major sport to press for its own fenced grounds, and in 1874 land was allocated north of the Torrens for the Adelaide Oval, until recently one of the world’s most beautiful sporting venues. However, the oval has been disfigured by the recent erection of giant lighting towers. Also, extensive building works there, approved late in 2002, seriously threaten the remaining visual charm of the oval area. The nearby Memorial Drive Tennis Club obtained exclusive use of 2 hectares of Park Lands in 1915, and from 1861 until 1968 swimming baths occupied the current site of the Adelaide Festival Centre; new baths were built in the northern Park Lands in 1969, and covered in 1985 to form the Adelaide Aquatic Centre. Today, over 100 sporting clubs use the Park Lands and the River Torrens as sporting venues.
Government departments: The Park Lands, being so convenient to the city, have proven irresistable to governments on occasion. The railways, police and military barracks, a cemetery, jail, hospital, and utility depots have all used parts of the Park Lands.
Institutions: Educational and cultural institutions (library, museum, art gallery, university, Festival Centre, botanic gardens, zoo) have all claimed much of the Park Lands between North Terrace and the River Torrens. A secondary school occupies a large area of Park Lands adjoining West Terrace.
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The HISTORY of
Adelaide's Park Lands |
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| All cities have parklands, so what makes Adelaide different? It is our unique inheritance of a well-planned city, supposedly 'one mile square', with wide streets, large public squares, a river dividing the main city core from an attractive, elevated residential section to the north; and all surrounded by 700 hectares of parklands. Amazingly, most of those parklands have been retained over the last 170 years in Adelaide, whereas most other cities have suffered significantly greater alienation of their parklands over the same period.
Even before the first colonists left England for South Australia in 1836, the value of parklands as the 'lungs' of a city had been recognised. However, no specific directions regarding the provision of parks were given to Colonel Light by the colonising commissioners when they appointed him Surveyor General—although they gave him clear instructions on most other aspects of his task. He laid out the city of Adelaide during January and February 1837 (our hottest months of the year), assisted by a small team of surveyors and labourers with only barrows to carry their equipment. In eight weeks they detailed streets, squares, residential areas and 931 hectares of parklands.
View over Adelaide Oval and Park Lands c1890.
Courtesy State Library of South Australia.
The original 1837 map drawn by Colonel Light shows only nine proposed 'government reserves', taking some 380 acres (150 hectares) out of the Park Lands. Compare this with a modern map of Adelaide: it is easy to see the large areas that have been alienated for other uses. The largest area was taken by the railways—about 51 hectares. Nonetheless, it cannot be said that all alienation has been against the public interest. Such institutions as the Parliament, museum, library, and university along North Terrace, and the Adelaide Festival Centre between Parliament House and the River Torrens, are public assets that help to enrich public life and, in that sense, are not inappropriate uses of the land.
Since 1852, the Adelaide City Council has been responsible for care, control and management of the Park Lands. In the earliest days, there were rubbish dumps, cow paddocks and quarry pits in the Park Lands, as the fledgling Council sought income—in 1860 they earned 2,107 Pounds in this way. That same year, their expenditure on the Park Lands was 1,984 Pounds, although none went on parks or gardens! Happily, things today are very different and the Council now spends a reported $11 million annually on our Park Lands.
View from Adelaide over the River Torrens c1880.
Courtesy State Library of South Australia.
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