FOCUS On Burnside - the news hub

A number of locals were named as recipients of Queen’s Birthday honours.

Dr Victor Squires of Kensington Gardens received an AM for his extensive works in ecology and service to the environment. Victor said he was surprised when he found he was amongst those on the honours list. “It means a lot and I was surprised that I was given the award,” Victor said. “Very few people who work in the field of ecology get recognised like this. It was very nice that my efforts over the last 60 years have been recognised. I’m 83 now so I wasn’t expecting anything else to come about but there you go.”

The 83-year-old has published over 20 books and worked in 35 countries and on every continent, apart from Antarctica. Outside his ecological work Victor is proud of his Moslem hat collection, which totals in the hundreds.

Jill Swann, of Rostrevor was awarded an OAM for her work as a long time volunteer at the Art Gallery SA and at Hans Heysen’s former home The Cedars.

Dr Richard Abbot of Dulwich received an AM for his significant service to medicine and to leukaemia research.

Petras Bielskis of Glenside received an OAM for his service to the Lithuanian community of South Australia. He served in a number of roles in the Adelaide Lithuanian Society including as president between 1965 and 1989.

CAPTION: Dr Victor Squires recent recipient of an AM pictured with his prize Moslem hat collection.

Source: Adelaide East Herald

Gustave Adrian Barnes (1877-1921) was the Curator at the Art Gallery of South Australia from 1918 to 1921. He lived on West Terrace in Kensington Gardens in a ‘plain, unfussy’ house that he designed, with a painting studio upstairs.

He worked as a designer, modeller, etcher and was well-known for his landscape paintings in oils and watercolours.

Pictured here, Barnes in circa 1919 painting in Kensington Gardens.

Burnside Local History Collection

Constructed circa 1884, this bluestone two-storey house is located on the corner of Prescott Terrace and Kensington Road in Rose Park. The second owner, William Sandover MP (1822-1906), named the house Rosslyn in 1890.

Horse trams, similar to the double-decker pictured here, operated in Adelaide from 1878 to 1914. Pulled by usually two horses, a trams average speed was 8 km/h. The drivers were well respected, and worked between 12 to 14 hours a day, receiving a day off every second Sunday and one week each year.

Photograph: Circa 1885, Burnside Local History Collection.

To celebrate International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW) in May, East Waste, Jeffries and Council ran a competition to win Jeffries compost, soil and garden products. Residents were asked to 'Take the Pledge' to compost more food scraps and compostable items by using their kitchen caddy and green bin or their home compost bin.

Rick and his wife Deb are very committed to composting their food scraps at home in their home compost bins. They also use a kitchen caddy and green bin to compost items like meat, bones, dairy, bread, onion and citrus, along with their garden clippings.

It makes a big difference when food scraps are composted or go in the green bin, rather than going in the red bin. Sending food waste to landfill in the red bin cost around five times more than sending it to be composted in the green bin. Further, there are excellent environmental outcomes from composting.

Together, residents in Burnside are reducing the amount of waste going to landfill each year. Putting food waste in the green is an important part of this reduction. Click here for a list of all the items that can be placed in the green bin.

Rick and Deb were very excited to receive the bag of Jeffries Organic Compost which they will use in their beautiful garden. Their lovely dog, Doug, was also very excited to receive the compost and will need to hold himself back from trying to eat it.

Each year, Parks and Leisure Australia acknowledges excellence in our industry through its prestigious Awards of Excellence. These annual awards recognise and celebrate the outstanding initiatives and innovative efforts of ‘the people behind the places’ which promote good use of leisure time for a number of social, environmental and economic benefits to the community.

The Shed won the Parks and Leisure Australia (SA/NT) award for ‘Community Facility of the Year’. This automatically puts the project in the running for the national awards to be announced in the Parks and Leisure Australia National Conference in Sydney in September 2021.

This adds to the other awards won by The Shed such as the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia SA (IPWEA SA) Award in November 2020 for ‘Best Public Works between $2 Million and $5 Million’, and last week’s ‘Commendation for Public Architecture’ in the Australian Institute of Architects (SA Chapter) Awards.

Francis Hardy Faulding (1816-1868) built Wooton Lea circa 1861 in Glen Osmond. Designed by local architect James MacGeorge (1835-1918), the large stone house included seventeen rooms, with a kitchen and laundry and an extensive garden. MacGeorge is also known for his work designing the first part of the Savings Bank of South Australia on King William Street. The third owner of Wooton Lea, Arthur Crossing (1871-1952), sold the mansion in 1921 to Presbyterian Girls’ College, now known as @Seymour College.

Since 1938, the house has been known as Barr Smith House and continues to be used by and cared for by the College. In 1989, it was confirmed as a State Heritage Place.

Photograph: Wooton Lea, 1874. Burnside Local History Collection.

Residents of two Burnside apartment buildings are undertaking a trial of organics collection with bins borrowed from Council.

Traditionally, many apartment residents have been unable to compost their food scraps, due to a lack of onsite bins for collecting organics. The typical three-bin service has been offered to apartment buildings, however due to space limitations and specialised service needs, it is common for apartment buildings to have their own commercial waste services.

Because residents in apartment buildings pay Council rates but do not receive the three-bin service, they have effectively been cross-subsidising the cost of waste services for other residents. To balance this inequity, Council will be providing a financial contribution to the cost of waste management in eligible apartment buildings. Council is also promoting the collection of organic waste.

Newer apartment blocks, such as those in Cedar Woods at Glenside, have been constructed with an innovative organic waste system in place. But these systems are not in place at Air Apartments and Queen Victoria Apartments. So Council is supporting building managers to instigate the collection of organic waste. Council has provided trial kerbside organic bins, plus kitchen caddies and compostable bags, educational materials and new signage.

Queen Victoria Apartments resident Robert Mackay says the initiative is a welcome change after years of only being able to deposit food waste to landfill. “The kitchen caddy makes us more aware of vegetable waste,” he says. “When preparing a meal the green waste goes straight into the caddy. You also realise how much green waste you are throwing out. You start to feel good that you are doing something for the environment.”

Resident Chris Halbert says it ticks all the boxes. “In this world we need to be doing this (waste disposal) better. I am committed to doing what I can for our environment. Burnside made it so easy.”

From an environmental and financial perspective, it is far better to compost food waste, than to send it to landfill. It costs around five times more to send material to landfill, so ensuring food waste is collected as organic waste is a great way to keep pressure off Council rates.

L - R: Residents of Queen Victoria Apartments Robert Mackay, Glenda Brindle and Chris Halbert with their new kitchen caddies.

Are you an ex-scholar of Burnside Primary School?

In 2019, Burnside Primary School celebrated 150 years of public education for children in the local area.

The Burnside School opened in 1869 with 42 students and the first licensed headmistress Ruth England. The private home, located on William Street, which served as the first classroom is known today as The Cottage.

Over the past century, purpose-built classrooms have been added as the school expanded. There are now over 800 students and 70 staff members. Alumni include Andy Thomas (Astronaut), Tim May (Australian Cricketer) and Fiona Pike (Australian Golfer).

The maypole is from 1910 and the Year 7 class photograph is from 1931.

Burnside Local History Collection

In celebration of World Environment Day later this week, today’s windback is putting the spotlight on these Eucalyptus camaldulensis (River Red Gums). A local heritage listed landmark in the suburb of Tusmore, these trees line the rear of properties that front Tusmore Avenue.

Originally about 17 pairs, the trees were planted by William Rogers of Tusmore Farm during the 1850s and marked the main driveway to Tusmore House from Greenhill Road. Tusmore Farm included 800 sheep, 50 cattle, horses and over 100 acres in wheat and other cereals. The house’s gardens boasted cocoa-nut palms, banana trees, cedars, bamboos and pines. The farm was subdivided in 1912 and Tusmore House demolished in 1924.

The trees are a reminder of the original estate and remain as an indication of the location of the Tusmore House.

Photographs:

Entrance gates to Tusmore Farm circa 1898.

Sketch of Tusmore Farm from The Paddocks Beneath: A History of Burnside from the Beginning, by Elizabeth Warburton, page 87.

River Red Gums on Tusmore Avenue, Tusmore, June 2021.

In early 2020 Burnside Library initiated a Young Adult (YA) Book Discussion Group. Despite COVID-19 restrictions the group has grown and is at the point of splitting into two groups. They meet monthly in the Library on Thursday evenings.

In April they invited an Adelaide author to a meeting, Poppy Nwosu (pictured), author of many titles including Making Friends with Alice Dyson. The members of the group read her novel in the month leading up to the meeting and came prepared with comments and questions about her novels. The group loved hearing about Poppy’s creative process, daily writing routine and ‘writing perks’ such as purposefully NOT describing how a character looks because she likes to leave that up to the reader. During the meeting, Poppy even gave away some copies of another of her novels Taking Down Evelyn Tait. The group really enjoyed having an author attend the plan is to have other Young Adult authors attend in the future.

YA Book Discussion Group is run by one of Council’s friendly and dedicated volunteers, Kiana and she is always looking for new members. If you have a 14 - 23 year old in your family who loves to read YA novels, meet people and talk about books, please contact the Burnside Library on 8366 4280 to register their interest.