David Penberthy: The burgeoning Hills population needs more infrastructure before it gets bigger problems

Monday’s traffic jam highlights how risky it is to have such an enormous population in the Hills without all the infrastructure and transport access they need.

Adelaide is often described as a linear city that sprawls to the north and south. Suburbia now envelopes Gawler and is creeping towards Roseworthy.

Down south, Aldinga and Seaford and all the land in between now threaten to merge into one sprawling mass of homes. What was 15 years ago a quiet spot to buy a dirt-cheap block a stone’s throw from the beach is becoming a mega-suburb with a new school, new sports complex and a raft of new shops where once stood a lonely, crumbling service station.

The truth is that suburban Adelaide is not so much a line as a triangle as the Hills region grows east towards the Murray.

A day in the Hills used to be a novelty for us Plains folk. I can remember going to my Uncle John’s farm in Mount Barker as a kid in the 1970s. The whole area felt like a Hans Heysen painting and the farm itself felt like a genuine day in the bush.

These days, Uncle John’s farm is only a short drive from an Aldi, a giant Thirsty Camel and a Guzman y Gomez drive-through at the huge new servo that’s clogging up traffic on that unfit-for-purpose road that takes you into what was once a sleepy country town.

My sister lives in Strathalbyn and has done for almost two decades, meaning that she almost qualifies as a local. And again, that drive up the hill to “Strath” has changed in record time.

The road from the Mount Barker roundabout through to Wistow was once nothing but acreage, horse agistments and berry farms.

In the past couple of years it has come to look like a chillier version of Seaford Meadows, with cheek-by-jowl houses popping up overnight on the road through to Strath.

In the past few days, the Adelaide Hills has been confirmed as an area where some new thinking is required and a belated recognition that not enough has been done to recognise and cater for the growth.

Perhaps it’s because of COVID-19, whereby leaders often seem to have forgotten that it’s their job to lead, but we saw some pretty lame handballing this week when Transport Minister Corey Wingard said the management of the truck breakdown that paralysed the South-Eastern Freeway was a matter for his department, and not something on which he intended to comment.

Buses banked up and passengers alighting on Glen Osmond Rd on Monday. Picture: Ryan Piekarski

Once upon a time, ministers saw it as their job to champion the interests of the community and use the authority of their office to demand or even bully the bureaucracy into lifting its game. Now they’re more likely to be ensconced in their office hoping the bureaucracy can let them duck an issue which will hopefully somehow disappear.

The minister’s lack of ownership of this issue was disappointing in a broader sense but specifically enraging for the many Hills residents I know who spent upwards of three hours in their cars this week trying to get home.

Their fury was compounded by the fact that, with roadworks contributing to the chaos, this is hardly a problem that they haven’t faced before. The decision to have a tow truck on standby seemed a belated no-brainer, especially given as federal Liberal MP Nicolle Flint wrote on these pages two days ago we have one of these truck breakdowns or crashes every 10 days.

This truck problem itself is small beer in the bigger picture, which is whether a road that once seemed as grand as the South Eastern Freeway is actually up to scratch any more for this vastly populated and fast-growing part of the Adelaide suburban triangle.

The ongoing chaos has already restarted the debate around whether trucks should be allowed to use the South Eastern Freeway, as was promised by Steven Marshall with his now-shelved Globelink blueprint.

And there’s the equally large question of where those trucks should go when they make it down to town. We have already seen the tragic results of what happens when a truck loses control at the Tollgate.

The KPMG research Nicolle Flint quoted the other day shows how unacceptable it is that busy suburban thoroughfares such as Portrush and Cross roads have to play host to these huge vehicles. Beyond that, more thought is needed about the provision of infrastructure such as rail services for the burgeoning number of Hills residents.

On current population trends, it won’t be too long until bigger challenges emerge, such as whether a new hospital is needed to service the Hills region so as to save residents the trouble of coming to town to the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

Adelaide is like Sydney was 50 years ago when suburbia marched all the way to the foot of the Blue Mountains. Only belatedly did western Sydney residents get a road system that wasn’t designed for horses and buggies and a purpose-built hospital at Westmead that was able to serve them.

We don’t want to make the same planning mistakes and end up retro-fitting what is effectively a whole new city once all the growth has occurred.

In the context of state politics, the Hills has the potential to become a place of huge opportunity for the party that best harnesses and acts on these interests.

While it is on paper a safe space for the Liberal Party and a no-go zone for Labor, federal politics has shown how amenable Hills voters are to progressive independents, with the near-victory of John Schumann against Alexander Downer in 1998 and the sustained popularity of Rebekha Sharkie in the once-Liberal stronghold of Mayo.

If the Liberal voices in the Hills don’t sound like local voices, things can change pretty quickly up there.