Inside history of Adelaide Crows’ potential new homes of Thebarton Oval and Kings Reserve
As a major step looms in Adelaide’s quest for a new home, historians have shed a light on the quirky past of Thebarton Oval and Kings Reserve. Is it myth or reality?
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An urban legend in Adelaide’s inner-western suburbs is that an elephant is buried under Kings Reserve.
“I’d heard the story about an elephant from the zoo,” West Torrens councillor and historical society member Graham Nitschke told this masthead.
“It’s a good story, but I don’t think it’s true.”
While the buried elephant is far more likely a myth than reality, Kings Reserve does sit on top of a former rubbish tip believed to contain railway carriages and car bodies.
If West Torrens Council grants Adelaide Football Club a lease at a special general meeting on Tuesday night, the Crows will be a step closer to turning part of the park into a secondary oval via their $100m plans for a new training and administrative base at Thebarton.
Pending approval and construction timelines, Kings Reserve would be shared between the community and the club from 2025.
Trees in the middle of the park, planted in the late 1990s, were a sticking point in Adelaide’s plans due to concerns up to 10 could be lost that would reduce canopy and community land.
The Crows and state government last month reached an agreement that ensured just one of the trees would be razed, as well as five considered to be of less importance, near Ashwin Parade.
Before the trees were there and the ground was levelled, Kings Reserve was a pug hole – a former mined clay deposit area.
Material excavated from the pit was originally mined for brickmaking.
The brickyard at what was now Kings Reserve was JF King and Son, operated by Frank King.
King, who lived from 1851 to 1921, was a local builder and funeral director, a state cricketer, first-class umpire and mayor of Hindmarsh.
Pugholes stopped because workers eventually dug down as far as the water table and could not go any further so it became useless.
Kings Reserve’s was filled in and it became a public park in the early 1970s, then hosted West Torrens District Cricket Club matches from 1983.
The Crows’ plans for the precinct do not include any buildings on Kings Reserve or its periphery.
Even if Adelaide wanted to, it would be prohibitively expensive because it was geotechnically unstable ground.
A West Torrens cricket social clubrooms was condemned in 1994 after being built several years earlier on the former pughole and tilting, damaging walls and glass frontages.
Cricket historian and ex-West Torrens club president Denis Brien recalled gaping sinkholes on Kings Reserve during the 1970s because water rusted the roofs of the car bodies that were underneath.
“This went on for two or three years,” Brien said.
“On (West Torrens) footy days, Kings Reserve became a car park.
“Car park attendants would get there first thing Saturday morning and have to rope off a huge area because of the sinkholes.
“There were some bloody big ones.”
Sinkholes disappeared by the early 1980s – and had not reappeared – permanently filled by the council.
Kings Reserve will become a car park again if Adelaide’s AFLW side plays home games at Thebarton.
The chances of sinkholes reappearing at the site are next to zero.
Being able to have two ovals is a major reason for Adelaide choosing Thebarton as its proposed new base.
While Kings Reserve has a quirky history, Thebarton Oval’s is rich.
Opened in 1921 as Thebarton Soldiers’ Memorial Oval and Recreation Ground, West Torrens used it for cricket from the beginning until 1988.
The venue has also hosted motorbike racing, trots, an open-air picture theatre, concerts, gala days and baseball.
It was West Torrens Football Club’s home ground from 1922-1989, where SANFL champions such as Bob Hank and Lindsay Head regularly dazzled spectators.
When West Torrens merged with Woodville in 1990, league games were shifted to Woodville Oval.
Adelaide Footy League was at Thebarton from 2008, then the SANFL with the amateurs on a sublease.
In a neat bit of symmetry, the Crows played their inaugural AFLW game at Thebarton in 2017.
Having looked at more than two dozen sites over several years, Adelaide, which had been at West Lakes since its inception in 1990, identified Thebarton as its preferred new base in August 2022.
The Crows had been knocked back for the former Brompton Gasworks and the SANFL significantly reduced its asking price to relinquish its lease from $11m to $8.5m.
Adelaide intends to preserve and integrate Thebarton’s history as part of its redevelopment.
The Hank Brothers stand, which is locally heritage listed, is being retained and refurbished.
A state heritage-listed former ticket box and gates at the ground’s southern end will remain as a memorial to the Anzacs who lost their lives in World War I.
Not far from that, outside the oval, is a heritage-listed former World War II air raid shelter that is now home to two magic clubs: Australian Society of Magicians and International Brotherhood of Magicians.
Adelaide hopes to be based at Thebarton from 2025.
The Crows would loved to have just clicked their fingers, like magic, and sped up the process, but it had been a rollercoaster of delays, community backlash and compromises.
Emma Dawes, from the 5031 Community Facilities and Greenspaces Action Group, said preserving Kings Reserve had been vital for residents because of the scarcity of open green space in the West Torrens district.
A massive step for the Crows could occur on Tuesday night, when the council was expected to grant the club a 42-year lease.
That would essentially take West Torrens out of the picture and leave State Commission Assessment Panel approval and the SANFL securing a lease at Football Park as the remaining key hurdles before the Crows could finally start building.
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