Adelaide Electorate

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:33): I rise to speak about a wonderful community event that I look forward to each year, the Walkerville Art Show. On Friday 6 October, I was able to attend the official opening of the art show with the Premier, who was able to do the honours in opening this wonderful community event. It really does get bigger and better each year. This year, we had more than 600 entries.

For over a decade it has been held at the St Andrew's School hall. It is organised and conducted by the Rotary Club of Walkerville. They do an absolutely tremendous job, both the art show committee and the Walkerville Rotary volunteers, who put on a really wonderful official opening night as well as do an amazing job running the art show, which ran from 6 October to 14 October. I also want to thank its major sponsors, the Town of Walkerville and of course St Andrew's.

A big thanks to judge Jo Harris, who had the incredibly difficult job of choosing the winners. Best in Show this year went to Sue Foutoulis for her painting Pause & Reflect. The Best Acrylic or Oil Painting went to Tina Barr for Murray Reflections. The Best Watercolour or Other Medium went to Roe Gartelmann for Tide's Out Port Vincent. The Best Photograph or Sculpture went to Jasmin Feneley for Quiet Murray Morning, a really beautiful photograph. The Picture Hangers Award went to Sue Mills for The Bird & the Bee.

Just by listening to some of the titles of some of the artworks you can see that it definitely has a South Australian flavour, and I think that is one of the strengths of the Walkerville Art Show. It is a wonderful opportunity for South Australian artists to be able to showcase beautiful South Australian landscapes as well. Once again, congratulations to the Walkerville Art Show committee and the Rotary Club of Walkerville for another amazing event.

Recently, I was also able to celebrate another really wonderful day in our community, which was the official opening of my Prospect pocket park. This is delivering on an election commitment I made to our community at the 2022 election. There was a really ugly, unsightly dirt block on the corner of Main North Road and Da Costa Avenue. It was full of dilapidated buildings, graffiti and weeds and it really was an eyesore for the entry statement to Prospect, Medindie and Medindie Gardens.

I had a number of constituents raise this block with me. They previously raised it with the former member, but it had not gone anywhere, so I said, 'Why can't this block be something better than just an unsightly blight on our community or indeed probably the site of future development of some kind of high-rise?' So we changed that thinking and we said, 'Why can't this become a beautiful park with more open green space for the community to enjoy?' That is what we have delivered.

The other Sunday we were able to officially open the park. We had a beautiful Welcome to Country performed by Yungandalya Tamaru, my dearest brother, and we had many locals come out. Of course, I provided my free popcorn. We had free face painting and also various other activities for the community to enjoy. A big thank you to the Prospect Lions Club for their free barbecue as well.

This is really just an example of me wanting to green our neighbourhood, to provide increased tree canopy and to provide more open green spaces for the community to enjoy and not just the two-legged variety but the four-legged variety as well. It has been really wonderful driving past the new pocket park and seeing so many people enjoying it. Just the other night, I was coming home from a function at about 9pm and it was wonderful to see about three or four people there with a range of dogs running and enjoying the open green space and having a really wonderful time.

I am very proud to have been able to deliver on that election commitment for my community, but wait, there is more. I am delivering another pocket park just across the way on Churchill Road for the Ovingham community as well. The community recently held a permaculture workshop to look at ideas of what might end up going on that pocket park site as well. I am very proud to be greening my neighbourhood and delivering more open green spaces and tree canopy for our community.