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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-24 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Cobbler Creek Recreation Park

Mr BOYER (Wright) (15:12): It is my great pleasure today to talk about the beautiful Cobbler Creek Recreation Park, which is nestled between Golden Grove, Greenwith, Salisbury East and Wynn Vale in the north-east. Cobbler Creek is now one of our premier open spaces and offers a very inviting, well-equipped natural space that is enjoyed by record numbers of people in our community.

The park recently underwent an extensive upgrade under the previous Labor government. I would like to take this opportunity to offer a word of thanks to all those people who were involved in that upgrade, including the department of environment and natural resources, local park rangers and the Friends of Cobbler Creek for working collaboratively to build this fantastic recreation space. A special mention should also be made of the design team at Birdseye Studios, a local landscape architecture company based in Malvern, which designed the play space.

Cobbler Creek appeals to a diverse range of people in our community. It offers sprawling walking trails, with beautiful views over the gulf, barbecues and the new kites and kestrels nature play space. The play space was designed and inspired by the kites and kestrels that fly over the park. Those familiar with the new play space would have noticed that there are big climbing structures that look like giant birds' nests. They were designed to provide visitors to the park with a vantage point to observe the fauna and also to engage kids, not just with the play equipment that you expect to have at a local recreation park but also with the natural surrounds, which are pretty breathtaking at Cobbler Creek.

As someone who spends a lot of time at Cobbler Creek with my three kids, I can attest to how successful the redevelopment has been. Since it opened in October 2016, the number of visitors to the park has exploded. In fact, data collected by the department at the time showed that visitor numbers for the month of January rose from 1,350 to more than 12,000 once the redeveloped park was opened.

The design and layout of the park has received numerous awards and accolades since that opening. Just recently, it received the 2018 Park of the Year Award from Parks and Leisure Australia in the South Australia and Northern Territory section, and in 2017 it received a Parks and Open Space Landscape Architecture Award at the SA Landscape Architecture Awards event.

I would also like to pay tribute to the efforts of the Friends of Cobbler Creek—or the FOCCers, as they are known—of which I am a proud member, for all the volunteer work they do in the park to preserve the natural environment, to encourage people to spend time in the park and also to make sure that the invasive pests, which unfortunately we have to contend with, are managed. Friends of Cobbler Creek do this by running family-friendly events where rangers and volunteers show kids through the park, explain the importance of the environment, discuss the different species that live there and educate them on all the hard work they do to keep our natural environment looking pristine.

Finally, I would like to thank the Rotary Club of Salisbury for the great tree planting event held at Cobbler Creek on Saturday. Together we planted close to 140 trees. It was part of the worldwide Rotary International challenge to plant one tree for every Rotarian to demonstrate the Rotary club's intention to protect the environment and combat the effects of climate change, and I was very happy to unveil a plaque to mark that occasion.

Thanks go to Cathy (the new president of the Salisbury Rotary club), Rotarians, volunteers from Friends of Cobbler Creek and Ranger Ash, who were all on hand on Saturday to help us with the tree planting. I make special mention of Amber Pailsthorpe, who treated us to a beautiful rendition of What a Wonderful World after the unveiling of that plaque.

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