FOCUS On Burnside - the news hub

The City of Burnside is a beautiful place. Part of what makes Burnside beautiful and distinctive is the local wildlife. We interact with it every day. There are unmistakable sounds like the singing of Australian Magpies, the double hoots of Boobook Owls and the ‘bonks’ of Pobblebonk Frogs. There are unmistakable sights, too, like colourful Lorikeets and Rosellas, or iconic Koalas and Echidnas in the suburbs.

If you have a garden in Burnside, you have local native wildlife visiting it. If you’d like to attract more wildlife to your garden, birds and butterflies are a great place to start. Here are a few tips:

1. Grow some structure into your garden. Including some different layers of vegetation is particularly important for smaller birds. For a large garden, you should include trees, tall shrubs, small shrubs, native grasses and groundcovers. For a small garden, be sure to include shrubs of different sizes and some groundcovers. A garden with good vegetation structure will attract smaller birds like New-Holland Honeyeaters and Silvereyes. If you live closer to the hills, you might also attract Pardalotes and Superb Fairy-Wrens.
2. Grow indigenous plants. The plants found naturally in Burnside will naturally help attract the local wildlife. A variety of colourful flowers will attract butterflies and provide nectar for them. Beautiful local flowers will help, like purple Native Lilac and Kangaroo-Apples, yellow Wattles or Goodineas and white Native Hollyhock or Rice-flowers. You could plant local Dianella instead of Agapanthus. If you desire a sculptural element in your garden, a Xanthorrhoea grass tree might do the trick.
3. Don’t deter the wildlife. Adding structure and colour to your garden will attract beautiful birds and butterflies to your garden. Make sure you don’t spoil the place for wildlife. Keep cats inside and avoiding the use of pesticides and herbicides.

If you are trying to attract new birds and butterflies to your garden, be sure to let your neighbours know. The better the habitat in surrounding gardens, the more successful you will be at attracting these beautiful local wildlife to your garden.

The Council typically conducts a native plant giveaway in autumn – further details will be in the autumn edition of Focus (March 2022).

Below: a boobok owl and a honey eater

Biodiversity comes from bio, meaning life and diversity, meaning variability. Biodiversity is the variety of all living things, the different plants, animals and microorganisms, the genetic information they contain and the ecosystems they form.

Levels of biodiversity

Biodiversity is usually explored at three levels which work together to create the complexity of life on Earth.

Genetic diversity

Each species is made up of individuals that have their own particular genetic composition. To conserve genetic diversity, different populations of a species must be conserved. Genes are the basic units of all life on Earth. They are responsible for both the similarities and the differences between organisms.

Species diversity

Species diversity is the variety of species within a habitat or a region. In Australia, more than 80 per cent of plant and animal species are endemic, which means that they only occur naturally in Australia. No other country has as many endemic flowering plant families as Australia.

Invertebrates - animals without backbones - make up about 99 per cent of all animal species, and most of these are insects. Insects fill many vital roles in ecosystems as pollinators, recyclers of nutrients, scavengers and food for others. While we may mostly notice mammals, they actually make up less than 1 per cent of all animal species.

Ecosystem diversity

Ecosystem diversity is the variety of ecosystems in a given place. An ecosystem is a community of organisms and their physical environment interacting together. An ecosystem may be as large as the Great Barrier Reef or as small as the back of a spider crab's shell, which provides a home for plants and other animals, such as sponges, algae and worms.

Michael Perry Reserve - an example of Biodiversity.

On the banks of Second Creek, tucked away in Stonyfell, is a very special place, sometimes called ‘the hidden gem of Burnside’.

Michael Perry Botanic Reserve is a small wonderland, a place we have been working hard to restore to its former glory.

Once choked with weeds, the creek is now lined by indigenous species of plants. Reeds, rushes and silky tea trees provide habitat for small birds like superb fairy wrens. The waters abound with frogs and yabbies, food for resident kookaburras, cormorants and white-faced herons.

On the hillside, the indigenous woodland is being restored and native wildflowers flourish, reminiscent of the times when the area was managed by the Kaurna First Nation’s people.

In this sheltered valley there is an historic garden, which was once part of the Clifton Estate, the original house can still be seen high on the hill.

Plantings of exotic trees, some dating from the 1870s, form the backbone of the garden. Exotic palms, pines, araucarias, oaks and cypress tower above the valley.

However in recent times the garden fell into disrepair with woody weeds and other feral species taking over, while many of the stately trees are reaching the end of their natural lives.

In 2019 Council produced an ‘Historic Garden Adaptation Plan’ to guide the revitalisation of the garden and retain its character as a botanically significant collection.

Volunteers toiled on garden beds and pathways, weeds were cleared and over 250 species of specimen trees and plants were planted.

These plantings will ensure that the garden and its unique environment continues to grow and retain its status as a very special place in Burnside.

If you haven’t been there for a while, take a stroll along the Second Creek walking trail and discover Burnside’s hidden gem.

This Christmas card was released by the RAAF in 1944.

Flight Sergeant William Dean (1920 - 2011), served in the RAAF during World War II and collected this card in 1944. The three planes pictured are Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats, which Dean’s Squadron flew out of Darwin during the war.

During his retirement, William Dean was a long-serving volunteer at the City of Burnside and enthusiastically gave his time to helping the community.

His family donated this card, along with other items relating to the Dean family to the Local History Collection.

Also pictured: Flight Sergeant William Dean, circa 1944.

We are excited to reveal our three Instagram Photo Competition winners for this year (@ccceee00, Mr Chuck, Dachshund, @xanderfotos). Thank you so much to everyone for your entries, we really loved seeing what Burnside meant to you and the variety of aspects that make up the community.

What a year we've had at Council! Here is the final Burnside Highlights of 2021, thank you all for your support! We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy 2022.

Summary:
✅ Christmas Card Competition winners announced
✅ 0% rate rise this financial year
✅ Completion of the Pikurna Wirra/Peter Bennett/Laurel Avenue Organic Community Garden
✅ Completion of the Kensington Wama/Kensington Gardens Reserve project
✅ New sculpture in Constable Hyde Gardens
✅ Burnside named a Tree City of the World for the second year in a row
✅ First ever Environment Awards and Business Awards
✅ Commenced work on Magill Village Project and Tusmore Wading Pool redevelopment.

This is just a summary of some of the key decisions and things happening in Burnside. You can read the minutes in full at https://bit.ly/BurnsideAgendaMinutes

The interactive mural was created by Miss Libby Rose (The Sewing Yogi) in partnership with Burnside Council. The many wonderful individual squares that make up the lotus mural were created over weeks of workshops. Visit the Civic Centre to view the mural.

Burnside’s newest resident needs a name. WIN four tickets to the Regal Theatre

A yultu* has found a forever home in Kensington Wama – but it has no name. Yultu is the Kaurna word for frog.

Our yultu would like a name with style. Some of its favourite celebrity names are Trevor, Politoed, Frog Prince and Michael Perry (our frog admits that last one is a place and not a person, but likes it anyway).

Tell us what you think its name should be and WIN four tickets to the Regal Theatre for any movie, and any session; plus the winning name will feature on a plaque in the Kensington Wama nature play space.

The competition is open for children aged 12 and under who live or attend school within the City of Burnside.

Entries close Tuesday 18 January 2022.

A resident in Kensington Gardens was completing renovation works last year and uncovered a pile of postcards and photographs from a previous owner. The resident donated these items to the Burnside Local History Collection.

Pictured is the 1921 Christmas greeting that the dustman sent the owners. A ‘dustman’ is someone employed to remove rubbish, refuse or ashes.

The Library of Things is an exciting new collection available at Burnside Library that launched in October 2021.

The theme of the Burnside Library of Things collection is ‘kitchen items’. You can now use your existing library membership to borrow from a fantastic library of tools, including kitchen utensils, cake tins, baking kits, and so much more!

The Library of Things is an excellent way to save money, free up space in your cupboards, and is kinder to the planet, too.

Sarah Parton, Library of Things customer and environmental scientist, and her son Mattais, recently borrowed a lovely heart-shaped baking tin from the Library of Things to bake some special cakes together.

“The kids and I made a zucchini chocolate cake and a beetroot red velvet cake with rose petals on top for my birthday, Sarah said. “The cakes (surprisingly) both turned out great! The kids love baking - mainly because I let them lick the spatula!”

Sarah would love to see the Library of Things continue to grow.

“People should get involved so they don’t have to clutter their home with things they rarely use - this way they have access to fun and useful items but instead we can all share them as a community.”

What does the future hold for the Library of Things?

Although only kitchen items are currently available to borrow, the goal is to expand the collection in the future to include other types of household items. Stay tuned!