{"id":1743,"date":"2017-01-23T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=1743"},"modified":"2016-12-12T14:55:47","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T04:25:47","slug":"five-fascinating-facts-about-the-adelaide-park-lands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2017\/01\/five-fascinating-facts-about-the-adelaide-park-lands\/","title":{"rendered":"Five fascinating facts about the Adelaide Park Lands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Think you know all there is to know about the Adelaide Park Lands? Think again! Here are five fun facts from\u00a0The Adelaide Park Lands<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Patricia Sumerling.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Elder Rotunda\u00a0comes from Scotland<\/strong> \u2013 Patricia says:\u00a0While the Torrens Lake was fringed with\u00a0promenades and walkways, there were few\u00a0grassy places to have picnics, listen to bands or\u00a0linger and chat. Sir Thomas Elder, sojourning\u00a0in Scotland, read about the forthcoming\u00a0opening of the lake in his most recent batch\u00a0of Adelaide newspapers and noted that the\u00a0corporation intended to beautify the banks of\u00a0the river by laying out several acres of ground\u00a0for a place of recreation and a promenade. He\u00a0saw it as an opportunity to donate something\u00a0worthy for the site and informed them of a\u00a0\u2018trifling gift\u2019 of a rotunda bandstand, which\u00a0he had shipped to Adelaide.\u00a0The rotunda duly arrived from MacFarlane\u2019s Saracen Foundry in Glasgow and was erected; its\u00a0columns were painted in bronze, with the remainder picked out in grey and blue. The rotunda\u00a0was officially opened on 28 November 1882, more than a year after the lake. A piece of music, the\u00a0\u2018Rotunda March\u2019, composed for the event, was played by the Adelaide City Council Brass Band.\"The<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Botanic Park had its own Speakers’ Corner\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 \u00a0Patricia says:\u00a0Speakers\u2019 Corner in Botanic Park became one of Adelaide\u2019s most popular attractions,\u00a0particularly for the \u2018sensation loving public\u2019 on Sunday afternoons. The only rule was to abstain\u00a0from making personal attacks.\u00a0In February 1895 a variety of speakers were on offer. Three or four individuals who had \u2018the\u00a0call\u2019 took it in turns to promote the scriptures, while regulars were \u2018for the most part gathered\u00a0around the soldiers of the Salvation Army, who worked with unflagging energy despite the heat\u2019.\u00a0The Army was conspicuous for \u2018blaring trumpets and the thumping of the drum\u2019. Nearby speakers\u00a0Stewart and Osborn \u2018fired off\u2019 slanderous statements about employers and capitalists.\u00a0By 1912, Barney, a celebrated veteran preacher, had braved winter rain and summer heat for\u00a0nearly 30 years to convert in a \u2018divine sense\u2019, mostly \u2018young men and maidens\u2019. Sometimes he was\u00a0dressed in a long sheet decorated with antediluvian drawings.\"The<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. The Park Lands had their own morality police (well, in a sense)<\/strong> \u2013Patricia says: During the First World War the police force\u00a0appointed its first two policewomen, Kate Cocks\u00a0and Annie Ross, who began work on 1 December\u00a01915 in time for the forthcoming summer. Kate\u00a0Cocks was famous for her vigilance on the Park\u00a0Lands, using her cane to separate lovers, who\u00a0were often unaware of her approach. Finding lovers\u00a0locked together she used her catchphrase \u2018Three feet apart!\u2019\u00a0In March 1916 courting couples came under the spotlight of the Advertiser<\/em> again: \u2018During the\u00a0last few years it has become the fashion among people to do their courting lying down. It is now\u00a0the practice for them to lie down so closely together as to appear immodest but many of them are\u00a0respectable.\u2019 Kate Cocks was not amused, commenting that the \u2018police were powerless to advise\u00a0couples to sit up\u2019.<\/li>\n
  4. The Park Lands had their own air raid shelters during World War II<\/strong><\/strong>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/strong>Patricia says:\u00a0It is not generally known that several miles of pipe were laid and trench air raid shelters built in\u00a0the city\u2019s squares, in children\u2019s playgrounds and on the fringes of the Park Lands and along North\u00a0Terrace during the Second World War. Generally not used for the purposes for which they were\u00a0intended, they existed from January 1942 to around August 1944, when they were filled in by a\u00a0bulldozer from the Highways Department.\u00a0The Hume cement pipes, which had been used for\u00a0shelters, had a second life in drainage works and in the children\u2019s playgrounds.\"The<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Large sections of the Park Lands were for many years ‘Cows Only’!\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 Patricia says:\u00a0One of the most enduring images of the Park Lands until the end of the 1960s was that of the\u00a0signs dotted around bearing the words \u2018Cows Only\u2019. In 1963\u00a0there were well over a thousand livestock grazing on the\u00a0Park Lands. However, in 1972 the last two dozen cows in\u00a0Park 27B, next to the North Adelaide Railway Station, were\u00a0banished, while 60 odd horses still grazing in several parks\u00a0were brought together in Park 6 off Lefevre Terrace in North\u00a0Adelaide. Today the long tradition of horse agistment,\u00a0begun in the 1850s, continues, creating a delightful rural\u00a0character in a capital city.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    To learn more about the Park Lands,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>\u00a0and take a look at Patricia’s well-loved history of this area.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \"The<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Think you know all there is to know about the Adelaide Park Lands? Think again! Here are five fun facts from\u00a0The Adelaide Park Lands\u00a0by Patricia Sumerling. The Elder Rotunda\u00a0comes from Scotland \u2013 Patricia says:\u00a0While the Torrens Lake was fringed with\u00a0promenades … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[559,554,557,556,560,555,558],"class_list":["post-1743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adelaide","tag-cows-only","tag-adelaide-park-lands","tag-botanic-park","tag-elder-rotunda","tag-morality-police","tag-patricia-sumerling","tag-world-war-ii"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-s7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1743"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1813,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743\/revisions\/1813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}