by Shane Sody
An advisory board, tasked with making recommendations about your Adelaide Park Lands, has come up with a wish list for projects that it would like to see funded in 2025.
Kadaltilla / the Adelaide Park Lands Authority is required to provide formal advice to both the City Council, and to the State Government.
Despite being named an “Authority” it has no actual authority to make any decisions about your Park Lands. Neither the City Council nor the State Government are obliged to act on Kadaltilla’s recommendations.
Nevertheless, among its recommendations for funding in 2025, are some of the same things that the Adelaide Park Lands Association has advocated in 2024.
Helen Mayo Park
Kadaltilla has recommended “master planning” with the long-term aim of getting landscaping, stairs and ramps to connect the large event space in Helen Mayo Park (Park 27C) to the River Torrens / Karrawirra Pari and also to the North Terrace Health and Education Precinct.
Such landscaping and connections have become possible after APA’s advocacy led to the removal (in March 2024) of unnecessary fencing that for decades had restricted your movements within Helen Mayo Park.
Heritage listing
Kadaltilla has recommended “elevating the Park Lands to global recognition and local pride by achieving UNESCO World Heritage status and State Heritage Listing for the Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout.”
These are APA’s goals too. They are among the Objectives that are embedded in APA’s Constitution. However successive State Governments have spent the past six years failing to act on a recommendation for State Heritage listing; and more recently, providing zero funding for a World Heritage bid.
Victoria Park / Pakapakanthi Master Plan delivery
Kadaltilla wants funding from either the City Council, or the State Government, or both, for:
“Enhanced pathways, tree planting, biodiversity areas, safer crossing points, additional cultural history signage and interpretive material, smart technologies for environmental monitoring to transform this iconic space.”
These initiatives would be consistent with APA’s consistent advocacy for your Park Lands to be managed as “Open, Green, Public” spaces.
However the “Master Plan” for Victoria Park / Pakapakanthi (Park 16) cannot over-ride the State Government’s insistence that large swathes of the Park must be off-limits to the public every year for more than five months.
The so-called “Master Plan” for the Park cannot prioritise public access, while the State Government remains in thrall to the demands of two annual anachronistic carbon-emission festivals within the Park.
Put simply, the “Master Plan” is not even permitted to envisage this Park AFTER motor racing.
Top (banner) photo by Ximena Pineda on Unsplash
The author of this article, Shane Sody, is the President of the Adelaide Park Lands Association and the editor of the semi-monthly newsletter, "Open Green Public".
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