Christopher Pyne: Adelaide Parklands are a waste of space if not used, so we need to start more redevelopment
Adelaide has great activities, events and experiences but some glaringly poor sections of city parkland. We need to start redeveloping so more people can enjoy the parks, writes Christopher Pyne.
Opinion
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In the past 12 months, TreeClimb in the south parklands, on Greenhill Rd, has attracted 100,000 visitors. It has invigorated an area of the parklands most people assumed was unusable.
Off the back of this success the Adelaide City Council is looking to upgrade the BMX track adjacent to TreeClimb, which employs 45 people. It gets kids off their screens, gives office groups activities to do together and provides an attraction for tourists.
There is no downside to any of that. It’s exactly what the founders of Adelaide envisaged for the parklands when it was designed by Colonel William Light in the first half of the 19th century.
We need a lot more activities just like TreeClimb across the parklands, which aren’t a museum piece. They aren’t supposed to be a patch of scrub in the middle of a modern city of more than one million people.
We don’t want the parklands looking dormant, tired or, worse, in retirement! When anyone flies into Adelaide on the route that takes you across North Adelaide, you can’t help but notice the perfect border of nature that rings the city.
It makes Adelaide look well planned and healthy. It gives the city definition. You also can’t help but notice some of the terrific sporting and recreational infrastructure that makes the parklands look used and vibrant.
People have become so familiar with some of these structures that they forget they are on the parklands – the North Adelaide Golf Course, Adelaide University playing fields, South Terrace Croquet Club, Adelaide Oval, Memorial Drive, Botanic Garden, the Bicentennial Conservatory, the National Wine Centre, North Adelaide Aquatic Centre, West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide Hockey Club, Adelaide Bowling Club, myriad netball, tennis and playing fields and the Victoria Park racecourse buildings.
It’s to the city’s great shame that the racecourse was not redeveloped when the Cheltenham Racecourse was sold and turned into the new suburb of St Clair.
Victoria Park was the perfect venue for city horseracing. It would have been one of the few CBD racecourses in the world and certainly in Australia. It could have been a feature recreational activity for the parklands. Unfortunately, it was defeated by NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard).
The residents of East Tce and surrounds wanted the area to walk their cavoodles and labradoodles.
Now it sits idle for most of the year, being used by a fraction of the South Australians and tourists who could have enjoyed regularly watching horseracing at the site.
Apart from horse racing, it would have been a great opportunity to secure CBD car racing by building a permanent structure that could also have provided facilities for the annual Australian International 3 Day Equestrian Event. Recently, I wrote about the construction boom and, in particular, the new five and six-star hotels being built in the CBD.
It’s exciting. To attract and keep tourists here longer, we need to give them more activities, events and experiences.
Adelaide and SA does much of that well. We have superb restaurants, festivals, galleries and activities. We have more we can do and the place in which to do it – the beautiful parklands that surround the city.
There are some glaringly poor sections in need of attention and redevelopment. I know there are proposals to use the southwest parklands for new sporting facilities centred on an international-standard hockey field and facilities.
At the same time, the netball courts and facilities in that area could be improved. Who wouldn’t want to see more sporting infrastructure for young people to be proud to use?
As a parent of hockey players, its beyond belief that we have to drive for so long and so far for hockey games to be played on regulation pitches because there are so few in the metropolitan area.
Where will our new sporting stars train and develop if we have not international or even national standard facilities for them?
The area in the northeast of the parklands is dire. There could be so much more use of the open space between Robe Tce and Le Fevre Rd.
It’s dusty, dank and seemingly impenetrable. There are schools and sporting clubs that are desperate for more rugby and soccer pitches, ovals, courts, and decent club rooms for their teams.
Oh, and if – and when – that area is redeveloped, contractors might come across a worn rag doll. If they could return Goosie to my now 19-year-old daughter, it would be much appreciated. We lost it at the playground on Le Fevre Tce in 2007!
The parklands are for all South Australians. Let’s get the most out of them for everyone, not just the few.