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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-06-30 Daily Xml
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LEGOE FAMILY

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (12:02): This is quite an historic moment when the government gives precedence to private members' matters, so I commend it for that.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Enjoy the moment, member for Fisher.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH: I commend the Rann government; it is obviously getting close to the people, and that is what we want. I move:

That this house commends the Legoe family for their generosity in donating land in the Coorong to honour Colin Thiele AC.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I know you come from a highly esteemed literary family; your mother is well recognised as a writer, and you would appreciate the contribution of someone like the late author Colin Thiele. On Sunday 13 June, a large group (probably 150 people, or more) gathered opposite the Salt Creek roadhouse in the Coorong to acknowledge the gift by the Legoe family of land that they had owned for a long time in the Coorong. Whilst it is not a huge piece of land in size, it is a critical piece of land. It amounts to 13 hectares, and it is between the northern and southern sections of the Coorong National Park. It is very significant in that it is essentially in pristine condition and will enable the completion of that national park.

The Legoe family is noted for its generosity. His Honour Christopher Legoe, who inherited this land from his father, I understand, said that he was the black sheep of the family—he went in to law. We will not make any comment about that, but he did not continue the farming tradition. We know of other members of the extended Legoe family in the South-East, including the late John Legoe, who was very effective and active in the community through his council and the LGA. So, there is a tradition of community service and the Hon. Christopher Legoe decided that, to honour Colin Thiele, he would donate this land left to him by his father. We should acknowledge that, because it is the sort of thing that helps improve the quality and represents the character of South Australia, particularly members who have been very generous in their contribution.

At that gathering we had a lot of distinguished people. We invited representatives of the Ngarrindjeri. Unfortunately, they were not able to attend, but I did speak with one of the senior members at Meningie on the morning of the ceremony, so they were well aware of what was happening there. We know some of the works that Colin Thiele wrote: Storm Boy, The Sun on the Stubble, The Fire in the Stone, and so on. He was a great South Australian. He was born in Eudunda in 1920, and I know that he is acknowledged in Eudunda. However, I do not believe as a community and certainly as a government we have honoured Colin Thiele to the extent that we should and need to.

There are a lot of people in the community who have great regard for Colin Thiele and what he did and are disappointed that the government has not gone out of its way to acknowledge his contribution. I do acknowledge that the former minister for education kindly agreed, when there was a consolidation of schools at the Aberfoyle campus, that the name Thiele would be the name of the combined new school there. Sadly, that meant the loss of the name Heysen, which we know is recognised in the tunnels and other things, but another great South Australian who deserves to be recognised.

Colin's widow Rhonda was at the ceremony, as were his daughters who came down from Queensland, and we had Barbara Hardy, who is another notable South Australian. There were a lot of other distinguished people who have great regard for what Colin did not only as an author but also as an educator. In a way, Madam Deputy Speaker, that mirrors to some extent what your mother has been involved in: not only writing but also as an educator. Colin Thiele, as I say, deserves greater recognition, even beyond what has been done through the generosity of the Legoe family.

At the ceremony we had David Moyle representing the Nature Foundation of South Australia, who kindly facilitated this transfer of land. I will not go into the ins and outs of it, but it is not easy to donate something to the community, as the Hon. Christopher Legoe found out. However, through the good officers of the Nature Foundation it was possible for his family to donate that land and for it now to be effectively given to the community. We had other notable people there who knew Colin Thiele: former associate professor Alan Brissenden was there, and many others. That ceremony was a wonderful occasion. There is a commemorative stone there. If members travelling through the Coorong want to take a break, if they walk in about 100 metres or so from the Salt Creek Roadhouse they will see the commemorative stone and plaque that has been put there.

To conclude on this topic, I recently wrote to the Adelaide City Council who, after I lobbied them for a while to acknowledge Roy Rene (Mo)—and that was with the support of the then member for Adelaide—finally, and to my pleasant surprise, had a sculpture done commemorating Roy Rene in Hindley Street. If members have not seen it, they should go and have a look. I have suggested to the Lord Mayor, Michael Harbison, and members of Adelaide City Council that they might consider acknowledging the work of Colin Thiele by, for example, a sculpture of him, Mr Percival or Storm Boy, or something like that, either in Rundle Mall or some other situation.

When you walk down the mall, you will see that people love sculptures, and I think it is something that is worth doing. I sent a letter to the Premier and Minister for the Arts saying that the government should come on board in that project as well. Colin Thiele is well recognised outside of South Australia—his books have been translated into many languages—but, like the old saying about people not being recognised in their own land, I do not believe it has happened in the way it could and should.

The other suggestion regarding Colin Thiele which I made some years ago but which the government has not picked up is to create some literary scholarships. It was suggested at the function, when talking to people, that maybe the focus of those could be on works either for children or those that have a particular nature orientation in them. That could and should be considered by the state government. I commend this motion to the house, both as an honour to Colin Thiele and his many fans in South Australia, those who had great respect for what he wrote and what he did, and also the Legoe family and, in particular, His Honour Christopher Legoe, for their generosity in providing that land in the Coorong to complete the Coorong National Park and to have a lasting and ongoing tribute to Colin Thiele, who loved the Coorong and nature. I commend the motion to the house.

Mrs VLAHOS (Taylor) (12:12): I rise to support the honourable member's motion. The land donated to the Crown by the Legoe family is adjacent to Salt Creek and Coorong estuary, and it makes a positive contribution to the state's reserve system and the Coorong National Park specifically. The 16 hectares of land supports native vegetation typical of the coastal environment that is in the area, which is an iconic area. It includes several feeding habitats for the endangered orange bellied parrot, which I am led to believe has been recorded in the area. The land will be added to the Coorong National Park in the coming year, and it will form part of the River Murray South-East nature link corridor, a state government initiative aimed at protecting broad areas of habitat and communities of plants and animals.

This donation of land recognises the importance of the partnership between public and private spheres, as the member for Fisher has highlighted, and the conservation of the state's precious environmental assets. The memorial to Colin Thiele that the Legoe family plans to install on the land is a fitting gesture to South Australia's favourite and most honoured son. With his most famous literary work, Storm Boy, the late author brought the beauty and ruggedness of the wild environment to an international audience, both children and adults. Certainly, as a child in the 1970s, I read that book and followed that film, and I became more aware of South Australia as a Queenslander at the time.

As the government and the community work together to protect and conserve the Coorong and Lower Lakes, it is timely to recognise Colin Thiele's environmental concern for this area and our endeavours to ensure that generations beyond our own will continue to enjoy, appreciate and treasure the beautiful but fragile Coorong landscape. The minister will be seeking to have the land formally added to the Coorong National Park during the 2010-11 financial year.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:14): With great pleasure, I speak in support of the motion brought to the chamber by the member for Fisher. I congratulate him for his doing so, otherwise this chamber may not have become aware of this important gift to the people of South Australia. The piece of land in question is at Salt Creek. It is a small parcel of land in my electorate of MacKillop, and it is obviously adjacent to the Coorong. For those of us in the South-East, Salt Creek is an important staging post, and has been for generations, between the south-east of the state and Adelaide and this end of the state.

We often complain that we are isolated—indeed, we are and have been isolated since the beginning of the state—but by some quirk, this small parcel of land has remained in the ownership of the Legoe family for many years whilst all the surrounding land was converted to what is now known as the Coorong National Park. It is a significant park, and I could make many comments about the park; in fact, I might make a few. It is fulfilling that the Legoe family, particularly his honour Christopher Legoe, saw fit to pass this parcel of land to the state so that it can be added to the park and overcome that anomaly where there is a small parcel of privately-owned freehold land within the Coorong National Park.

It is also very fitting that, as the member for Fisher pointed out, this gift to the people of South Australia be dedicated to the memory of Colin Thiele, a great South Australian, a very popular South Australian author and former school teacher. I remember very fondly as a young boy reading Sun on the Stubble. I must admit that I have never read the more recent work, Storm Boy, but I happened to walk past a television that was going sometime within the last week where the film of Storm Boy was being replayed. I must admit that I did stop and take in some of the scenes for a few minutes. I think it was that film, probably as much as anything, that brought the Coorong area to the conscience of the South Australian and the greater Australian public.

The Coorong, as we are well aware and as we do know, has been suffering incredibly in recent years, significantly due to the lack of flows or the very low flows down the River Murray, and the fact that very little fresh water is flowing through the barrages into the estuary at the mouth of the Murray. When the estuary and the mouth of the Murray becomes relatively fresh with significant flows of fresh water out of the Murray through the barrages, some of that water mixes with the water in the Coorong and, over a period of months, freshens up the water in the Coorong.

More particularly, I would argue that the Coorong has changed because of activities that we undertook over a period of well over 100 years now (more like approaching 150 years), that is, the draining of the South-East. I have quoted this particular piece before in the house at various times, but I remind the house that George Goyder, a former surveyor-general, stated in 1864 that, in his opinion, half the land between Salt Creek and the Victorian border became inundated to between one and six feet deep every winter.

That is a huge volume of water, and the vast majority of that water was locked in behind the dunal systems which form the landscape of the South-East and it slowly but inextricably flowed to the north-west. As it was soaking through the dunes, under the dunal systems and progressively to the west from one flat to the next, a significant amount of that water did historically end up in the Coorong—some of it as surface flow, some of it as groundwater.

The digging of drains in the South-East, which started in the late 1860s in the first instance, was principally to allow passage of the mails between Adelaide and Mount Gambier rather than to open up more agricultural land. It was not until after some of the flats were drained that those who were digging the drains became aware of what fantastic agricultural land had been exposed after being drained.

That is how my forebears went to the South-East. They went there digging drains with a group of men sent down by Goyder and they took up farming in and around Millicent. In fact, they built the first permanent stone home in the town of Millicent, a home that is still occupied but not by the family. The impact of those drains has obviously been dramatic across the whole of the South-East, but it has also, in my opinion, been dramatic on the Coorong and that, to a significant extent, is the reason why the southern basin of the Coorong is now hypersaline and has been for many years.

I do not accept the proposition that was espoused by David Payton from the University of Adelaide that, because the southern basin of the Coorong had reached a salinity equilibrium, in a sense a hypersaline equilibrium, we should have left it at that stage. He made that case some years ago when we were debating and establishing the Upper South-East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management Scheme and had had imposed by Environment Australia (the commonwealth equivalent of our environment department) a limit on the amount of water that could be deposited into the Coorong from that drainage scheme. It was limited to 40 gigalitres a year.

It is, I think, a nonsense that we would do that, and it is only because in recent years the lack of flows down the Murray has exacerbated the hypersalinity situation in the Coorong that people such as David Payton, I think, are revisiting that earlier decision. Certainly, once the drainage scheme in the South-East is completed—and that will be very soon; it has taken a long time—I want to reopen that debate about the limit that is placed on the amount of water that can flow from the South-East through the Upper South-East drainage scheme, or any other scheme that is implemented in the future into the southern basin of the Coorong.

I think it would be great to see the southern basin of the Coorong freshened up to become at least estuarine, if not be returned to what was, according to the local Aboriginal communities, largely a freshwater system. I certainly concur with the comments made by the member for Fisher and again congratulate him for bringing this matter to the attention of the house. The Coorong is an iconic environmental site. The completion of the Coorong National Park by the addition of this small parcel of land augurs well for the future of the area and I congratulate the Legoe family for their gift.

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton—Minister for Environment and Conservation, Minister for the River Murray, Minister for Water) (12:22): I too in speaking to this—

Mr Williams interjecting:

The Hon. P. CAICA: No, I didn't. What I actually—

Mr Williams interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Okay, that is not what we are here to talk about.

Mr Williams interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for MacKillop, I think you will find this is my time. Thank you, and now it is minister Caica's time.

The Hon. P. CAICA: Yes, and I have been misrepresented. Do you or do you not want me to repeat it?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No; guys this is not the time for this argument.

The Hon. P. CAICA: I also wish to thank the member for Fisher for bringing this matter to the attention of the house and making us aware of the kind generosity of the Legoe family. I too thank and congratulate the Legoe family for the land that has been donated. That land is adjacent to Salt Creek and the Coorong estuary and is a very positive contribution to our state's reserve system. It is a very good area that supports native vegetation typical of the coastal environment in that area.

In my very brief comments, I congratulate and thank the Nature Foundation of SA for the work and the role that they played in this process in respect of this land being provided and donated by the Legoe family. It has been said that the land will be added to the Coorong National Park and form part of the River Murray South-East nature link corridor, which is an initiative that the state government is committed to and which is aimed at protecting broad areas of habitat.

In conclusion, I again thank the member for Fisher, the Nature Foundation of SA and I also sincerely thank the Legoe family for the donation of this land. Of course, it augurs well for the future in respect of the relationship between privately owned land and the commitment of that land to what ultimately is going to be the public estate of South Australia. With those few words, I thank everyone who has been involved in what is a positive contribution to the environment of South Australia and, in particular, the environment in respect of the Coorong and the Lower Lakes area.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (12:24): I too support the motion by the Hon. Bob Such, commending the Legoe family for their generosity in donating land in the Coorong to honour Colin Thiele and, just in light of the donation of the 16 hectares, I believe it is such an act of generosity; I must say that not everyone would be prone to use this same generosity, so I really do commend the Legoe family for that. In light of the comments of the member for MacKillop, I too studied Sun on the Stubble at school, very entertaining reading by the author Colin Thiele, a very successful South Australian author, who also wrote Storm Boy, which was made into a very successful film back in the mid-70s.

It is with regret I note that the Coorong is a far different place now from what it was back then. Let us hope that in the future—and I know the member for MacKillop mentioned part of the problems with the Murray and the Coorong—as we move forward, as we work towards a sustainable system through the appropriate sustainable diversion limits, as we work with getting more water from the South-East back into the Coorong, that we have a far more sustainable future instead of having, especially in the southern lagoon, a very hyper-saline pool.

Let us hope that as a state government, and as governments throughout the Murray-Darling Basin, we can work proactively towards that. In closing, I will again commend the Legoe family in what they have pursued to do here and what they will be doing. It is great also in recognising their contribution in recognising the contribution of Colin Thiele to this state.

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