South Australia’s Kensington Gardens Reserve project is officially open – the project revitalising the City of Burnside’s most popular recreational reserve and delivering a variety of environmental, recreational, cultural, and economic benefits.
The Council has worked very closely with Kaurna Traditional Owners to ensure best-practice cultural heritage management throughout the project and deliver a range of cultural heritage recognition initiatives, including a place of reflection and a cultural walk with interpretive signage and artwork.
The $7.4 million project, located in the Kensington Wama / Kensington Gardens Reserve, established a Heritage, Economic Workforce Participation Package to support indigenous job seekers in attaining accreditations and skills to pave the way for long-term construction industry careers.
The project created five full-time positions for indigenous job seekers, as well as six casual roles, and around 23 per cent of the overall workforce hours of the project is attributable to indigenous workforce participation.
The project represents the exciting start of Council’s journey towards reconciliation and has provided a platform to discuss, learn and experience hands-on Kaurna culture.
The project has delivered substantial environmental improvements, including:
- Improved stormwater quality runoff from the polluted urban Wattle Park catchment (before it is discharged into the downstream Stonyfell Creek system)
- An extensive revegetation program with at least 40 new trees, 1,450 shrubs, over 4,300 groundcover species, 4,800 new biozone plantings, and over 10,000 new plants in the wetland
- Improved local biodiversity, tree health, habitat, and riparian ecosystem
- Opportunities for future harvesting and reuse of stormwater
The project was brought to life with contributions from the following:
- $3 million from the Federal Government
- $850,000 from the South Australian Government’s Open Space grant program
- $215,904 from Green Adelaide’s 2019-20 Water Sustainability Grants scheme
- $81,000 from Tennis SA/Tennis Australia
Pictured: (left to right) James Stevens MP Federal Member for Sturt, Mayor Anne Monceaux, Vickie Chapman MP Member for Bragg, South Australian Premier Steven Marshall, CEO Chris Cowley.
