FOCUS On Burnside - the news hub

The City of Burnside received confirmation today of Council's successful bid for $1,134,438 in funding as part of the Federal Government's Local Road and Community Infrastructure Program (LRCI) Stage 3. The funding has been received for four projects:

• Laurel Avenue Pirkurna Wirra / Peter Bennett Organic Community Garden Part 2
• Mount Barker Road Shared Cycling and Pedestrian Path
• Penfold Park Playground (increased scope)
• Dulwich Community Centre.

This program supports local councils to deliver priority local road and community infrastructure projects across Australia, supporting jobs and the resilience of local economies to help communities bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Laurel Avenue Pirkrna Wirra / Peter Bennett Organic Community Garden Part 2

A new community garden was designed in conjunction with the community in 2020/21, and constructed in 2021 using previous stages of LRCI funding. Since opening it has been very well received by residents.

In the first stage of construction, some works were not able to be undertaken, including additional irrigated garden beds to meet community demand, columns to support shade cloth, storage bays for mulch and soil, bike racks and a pergola. The LRCI funding will enable Council to install these items.

These additional items will ensure the garden is able to be enjoyed by all members of the community.

Mount Barker Road Shared Cycling and Pedestrian Path

This project will provide a safe and viable link for cyclists to ride between an established bicycle route currently terminating in Boucaut Street, Glen Osmond. The off-street path will link from Boucaut Street to Gill Terrace. A separate but related project will link this path to the Crafers Bikeway. The first part of this project was funded through LRCI Stage 2, therefore this funding allows the completion of this project in its entirety.

Penfold Park Playground (increased scope)

The Penfold Park Playground Upgrade will revitalise the play space by providing a variety of play opportunities including inclusive play, sensory play, cooperative play, independent play, imaginative play, musical play and tactile play.

Council plans to include a mix of off the shelf play items with a ninja obstacle course, musical instruments and garden areas with accessible pathways, seating and a shade sail covering a large part of the play area. We will also be providing elements such as a non-verbal communication sign and plenty of play opportunities for children and adults with a variety of skill levels and abilities to ensure the playground is inviting and fun for the whole community. The additional funding allows Council to increase its original scope and design providing a much improved play space for the community.

Dulwich Community Centre

The purpose of this project is to renovate and revitalise the much loved but ageing Dulwich Community Centre to ensure it is accessible, functional and usable for the broader community for many years to come.

Works will include demolishing and rebuilding the front of the centre, ensuring provision of facilities to make the centre suitable for a wide range of community uses. The works will also include making the building DDA compliant, providing accessible access, parking and toilet facilities, as well as improving the environmental performance of the site by installing solar panels and incorporating water sensitive urban design principles in the surrounding yard.

This poster shows the sale of allotments in the late 19th Century subdivision called Knoxville. Knoxville was a suburb within the City of Burnside that is now part of Glenunga and Glenside.

Part of the land was owned by Nathaniel A. Knox from circa 1840 to 1882 and rented out as farmland. In the 1880s, Knox subdivided the land and named it 'Knoxville', inspired by the American city in Tennessee, which was named after his relative Henry Knox. In the 1910s, the area was renamed Glenside and Glenunga.

Knoxville Real Estate Poster, 1892.

The Kensington Gardens Reserve Project, located in the Kensington Wama / Kensington Gardens Reserve, was officially opened by Mayor Anne Monceaux, Premier Steven Marshall and James Stephens MP this afternoon.

The project has completely revitalised the City of Burnside’s most popular recreational reserve and delivered a range of environmental, recreational, cultural, and economic benefits.

Council has worked very closely with Kaurna Traditional Owners to ensure best-practice cultural heritage management throughout the project and deliver a range of cultural heritage recognition initiatives, including a place of reflection and a cultural walk with interpretive signage and artwork.

The project represents the exciting start of Council’s journey towards reconciliation and has provided a platform to discuss, learn and experience hands-on Kaurna culture.

In addition to the obvious recreational and amenity benefits, the project has delivered substantial environmental improvements including:

• Improved stormwater quality runoff from the polluted urban Wattle Park catchment before it is discharged into the downstream Stonyfell Creek system.
• An extensive revegetation program with at least 40 new trees, 1,450 shrubs, over 4,300 groundcover species, 4,800 new biozone plantings, and over 10,000 new plants in the wetland.
• Improved local biodiversity, tree health, habitat, and riparian ecosystem and
• Opportunities for future harvesting and reuse of stormwater.

Thank you to our funding partners:

• $7.4 million total cost.
• $3 million from the Federal Government.
• $850,000 from the South Australian Government’s Open Space grant program.
• $215,904 from Green Adelaide’s 2019-20 Water Sustainability Grants scheme.
• $81,000 from Tennis SA / Tennis Australia.

A time capsule, built by members of The Shed on Conyngham Street was buried on site. Inside the capsule are drawings by students of the Kensington Gardens Preschool, items from the Burnside Historical Society, a recent newspaper and photographs of the Kensington Gardens Reserve project. The time capsule will be opened in the year 2072.

Mayor Anne Monceaux announced the winner of the 'Name the Yultu' competition is Narayan, 9, of Kensington Park, and a student at Pembroke.

The winning name is Anura.

The winner of the 'Name the Yultu*' competition was announced today at the official opening of the Kensington Gardens Project by Mayor Monceaux today.

A judging panel that included artist Alan Sumner, Mayor Anne Monceaux and Council Member Grant Piggott chose 'Anura' from 15 entries.

The competition encouraged children under 12 years old that live or attend school in Burnside to suggest a name for the yultu that features in the Kensington Wama nature play space.

The winning name was submitted by Narayan, 9, of Kensington Park, and a student at Pembroke School.

Narayan was inspired by the naming competition held for Tili - the lizard that features in Constable Hyde Memorial Gardens. Tili is short for Tiliqua, the genus name for sleepy lizard. Narayan researched the scientific name for frog, which is Anura.

Narayan is fascinated by nature and has started the invertebrate rescue agency in his school.

A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (literally ‘without tail' in Ancient Greek).

Artist Alan Sumner created the yultu to feature in the new Kensington Wama nature play space. The sculpture uses wood from trees that were removed as part of the creation of the new wetland.

*yultu is the Kaurna name for frog.

Come and chat with Wei Krstic while she paints at the Civic Centre.

Wei's stunning works of art will be on display in the Cloisters area of the Burnside Civic Centre from Thursday 13 January to Friday 4 February 2022.

You will also be able to visit Wei, watch her work and ask her any questions you may have every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9.30 am - 1.30 pm throughout her residency.

"Upon completion of my formal arts training under tutelage of famed Landscape Artist Li Runbei (former Vice President of the Chinese Painting and Calligraphy Institute), I was awarded my Fine Arts Degree in the People's Republic of China," Wei says. "As well as skills in portraiture, my main interests include Calligraphy and Watercolour painting, in both the Traditional (guóhuà) and Western styles.

"I am a member of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts and had my works exhibited in the Society's 2021 'Portrait Prize'. For several years I have also enjoyed teaching these Chinese Arts to students ranging from the very youngest, through to those in their well-deserved retirement, at various venues around Adelaide."

From July 1883, horse trams travelled the Marryatville route into Burnside as far as the old police station on the corner of Greenhill and Burnside (now Glynburn) Road. From 1909, electric trams replaced horse trams and in the late 1930s, electric trolley buses and diesel buses were introduced. The tram service in Burnside ceased in 1952.

The @tramway Museum – St Kilda, South Australia has a useful interactive map that tracks the old tram routes.

Access the map here: Museum

A 1903 photo of the Glen Osmond Road Toll House, which ceased to be a collection point in 1847.

A resident recently donated this wonderful photo to the Local History Collection. If you have historic photographs or documents relating to the Burnside area, please consider donating a copy to the Burnside Library History Collection. To contact the Historical and Cultural Officer visit Historical Cultural Officer

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.