Friends of Parks Groups

Ms HUTCHESSON (Waite) (15:28): Hmm, well, that's interesting. Last weekend I joined the Friends of Shepherds Hill Recreation Park on their 25^th anniversary celebration. Parks and their dedicated volunteers hold a significant place in our community and this group is a testament to this and the power of community stewardship.

The park's gullies are well known for containing spectacular exposed glacial rock formations, some believed to be 800 million years old. These formations bore witness to the initial glacial activity within the Southern Hemisphere and even pre-date the planet's first fish.

The Friends of Shepherd's Hill Recreation Park have been instrumental in restoring this landscape, honouring its natural beauty and cultural significance. Their work goes beyond maintaining a picturesque landscape. It is about rebuilding native biodiversity and land that has existed for an unfathomable number of years before European arrival and has since experienced mass clearance and the construction of a railway through its hills. Later, these rapid colonial changes were paused, though, and in 1972 the area was managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

In 1999, the friends group formed and has worked ever since to restore the area's natural ecological beauty, especially through their primary goal of re-establishing grey box trees and red gums. They have done this work hand-in-hand with our national parks rangers, who also do so much to look after our parks and to educate our community about how valuable they are.

In recognition of their dedication, it is crucial to recognise the volunteers who fill these friends groups and do such an amazing job. Some of them have been there since the group's foundation. Their hard work and commitment have breathed new life into the land, transforming it once again into a sanctuary for native biodiversity and a cherished community asset.

I was very pleased to be able to present some of the members with awards for the time that they have been in the group. Ron Miller, Margo Carmichael and Charles Connelly, Coral Gomer, David Gomer, Bruce Lang and Geoff Wilmott all gave 25 years, and they continue to give. For 10 years, Graeme Brettig, Helen Tassell, Chris Regan, Robin Cram, Lindy Taeuber and Milton and Jan Turner have also given so much. I thank Bel Darley for organising the event and for all the work that she does with the group. It was a fantastic day: it was beautiful, the sun was shining and I really had a wonderful time.

Moving on to the broader Friends of Parks community, the Friends of Parks SA organisation has recently expanded its name to include the word 'nature', to now be known as SA Friends of Parks and Nature. This evolution reflects the group's mission to protect and restore South Australia's diverse natural environments across all land types, not just its parks.

I had the pleasure of attending the 2024 Friends of Parks Inc Forum a few weeks ago, hosted by the Friends of Belair National Park and the Friends of Old Government House. This event celebrated the invaluable work of volunteers and explored opportunities to enhance our natural environment in the future. It was a privilege to see the Friends of Belair National Park host such a wonderful event, and I am very proud to say that they won gold in the RAA Innovation Award for the development of their five-year strategic plan.

These stories of Shepherds Hill Recreation Park and the broader efforts of the Friends of Parks and Nature groups are evidence of what society can achieve when people come together as a community, driven by a shared love of nature and a commitment to safeguarding our planet. To all the volunteers across all our Friends of Parks and Nature groups, your dedication to the natural environment and the community is invaluable, and I thank you.

I might just take a quick minute to also talk about another community group—or a group of community members, I should say—who had a very special celebration at the end of August. It was the 50^th anniversary of the community program at the Blackwood Uniting Church. This program has been going for such a long time—as you can tell, for 50 years—that even my mum, my aunty and my sister have all done classes there. It was wonderful to hear the Reverend David Houston talk about how the group was formed and to hear all the wonderful stories of the people who attended and who had been to the classes over those 50 years. There was a beautiful cake that was cut, and you could have a look around the room at all the different types of craft that had been created by lots of different community members.

These classes are not just about learning these skills. They are about sitting down, meeting people, sharing a cup of tea and enjoying each other's company. That is what community groups do: they bring us together. I am so proud to have so many incredible community groups across my electorate. I know that I will continue to work hard to support them, and I thank them for everything that they provide.