Torrens Linear Park At Athelstone
with Keith Conlon

Twenty years ago, it was an overgrown and polluted rubbish dump of a river. Now, by contrast, the Torrens Linear Park is a magnetic green ribbon that runs thirty kilometres from its gorge, across the plains to the sea.

With Adelaide chosen as the international host city for World Environment Day on June 5, I took a Postcards trip to the youngest end of the Linear Park at Athelstone to explore some green themes like promoting local flora and fauna and cleaning up our stormwater.

Researching the story of the old Torrens stone weir (about one kilometre into the hills gorge), I came across an historical quirk. This Postcards theme was to go to air on the exact 160th anniversary of the official valve opening to provide Adelaide's first clean articulated water supply. The attractive stone weir is only a few metres from a picnic ground off the Gorge Road, which was hewn through the rugged gorge half a century after the weir was built. The last finger of the Linear Park pathway stretches up to the pretty spot where an old aqueduct still carts the water supply over the riverbed.

There are picturesque redgum and hillside vistas along the path now, but standing by the gently flowing stream, I could see dozens of stumps of Desert Ash trees. They created an impenetrable jungle here until they were cleared out to give native species a chance to re-establish.

On a rise that looks back to the gorge opening out of the Mt Lofty Ranges, the scene has changed dramatically in the last few years. On the river flat below a five-year-old river redgum forest is thriving on the side of an orange orchard and strawberry farm. A bicycle and footpath wends its way past a reed-covered wetland depression that absorbs the silt from a nearby quarry operation. Eccentric looking swamp hens call it home.

Just round the river bend, the cul-de-sac for a new subdivision intrudes right down onto the floodplain. It will, however, bring in more people to enjoy the remaining trees from the Wicks' family orchard. There are all sorts of exotic fruit and nut trees. Tall North American pecan nut trees, for instance, were in glorious autumn yellows among extensive indigenous plantings.

Tucked in behind an old apple cold store is pioneer Alexander Boord's humble cottage. Once six rooms built end-on-end stood here, but now only two remain....thatched, with an apple cellar, and with its stone rough hewn from rock from the Torrens, it also features small gun turrets in its end wall. That's an 1840's style security system.

A majestic and ancient river-red-gum towers over the river nearby. It takes us back to the aboriginal name for the valley. Kaurna people called it "Karra wirra parri" - the river of the red gum forests. The giant survivor provided a nice link with a World Environment Day theme...looking after what we've got. Similarly, where there was a bamboo-infested mess only a few years ago, replanted native pines and blackwoods thrive amongst young red gums to further reflect the spirit of the United Nations environmental theme.

On the downstream path, you'll see occasional signs of the prolific market gardening era in Athelstone, and then on a ridge running into a big bed in the Torrens, you come across the pioneer days and pieced de resistance. Still in private hands on the edge of the Linear Park sits Athelstone House. Dating back to the 1840's, its pleading for restoration, but its line of Italianate arched double doorways exudes a rustic grandeur. They were all covered with shuttered doors, as an old family photo reveals.

It was begun by one of the pioneering brothers, Charlie and Bill Dinham, and just down the hill from the house, is their flourmill on the Torrens. It was built three-storey high on the rocky bank of the river and proudly declared open for business in 1845. It's locked up and fenced to prevent vandalism, but its great stone walls and quarter-paned windows create striking early settler images among the gum trees.

It only lasted ten years. "Dinham's Folly" they called it, and too much water coming down past its water wheel was the problem. Floods knocked over the tin and canvas flume or aqueduct that brought its millsteam across the Torrens from a mill-weir quite a way upstream. The Postcards crew found a block or two of the old mill-weir-wall on a natural rock-reef earlier in the day.

Occasionally the Torrens Linear Park pathway rises from flats and climbs the steep sided bank out of the narrow river valley. We looked back to find a magnificent view of the gorge and Black Hill Conservation Park. The high sugar-loaf hills really do look black compared with the green and blue tinges of the rest of the range. Along the trail, we picked up shots of old steam driven pumps that used to serve a colonial irrigation village along the river at Athelstone. Three very tall palms near the river mark the house of the market-gardening Fry family, who planted their veggie crops here until only a decade or so ago.

In the National Nine News files we found dramatic and tragic vision of flood havoc at the Cudlee Creek camping ground up in the Torrens Gorge. They were a vivid reminder of how angry the river can become - and they brought home the fact that the Torrens Linear Park concept was very much driven by the need for flood mitigation measures on its passage through the Adelaide Plain. Before its development, a 1 in 80-year flood could inundate thousands of homes in the western suburbs.

The news story of the flood contrasted with the placid scenes we captured of Our Patch volunteers pulling out thistles and weeds from a regrowth section. Volunteer groups along the Torrens plant and maintain adding precious help for the council staff who tend the Park. Water quality-monitoring groups play a role too, and set another example that ties in with a World Environment Day theme - clean water.

Our Postcards junior scientist stars this week came from Dernancourt Primary School to demonstrate their ongoing water-monitoring commitment. About a dozen students measured salinity and turbidity and took samples to list the life-forms in the river. Rebecca beamed as I asked her what her group had found. "Lots of little boatmen", she enthused. It was a happy way of linking our Postcards show this week with World Environment Day on June 5. Its theme is "Time to Act". With the international focus on Adelaide for the event, you might consider joining an active conservation group along the Torrens or your own local creek. The first step, however, is to simply enjoy it, and so I hope you get the opportunity soon to visit the very attractive top end of the Torrens Linear Park.

PS Good luck with the new Postcards website completion. The details are listed in this week's new pages, and the prize is something millions of Europeans came a long way to enjoy - an adventure holiday on Kangaroo Island.

Details:

Torrens Linear Park - upper section.
Across via many streets adjacent to River Torrens
In Athelstone and Highbury.

Our Patch

A joint initiative of the Patawalonga
and Torrens Catchment Water Boards.
4 Greenhill Road, Wayville. SA 5034
Phone: (08) 8272-9190.

Web: www.cwmb.sa.gov.au