Celebrating Willunga Basin Story by Margret Keath. Photograph by Jason Porter.
Above: Looking out to the Willunga Basin from the Hart Road Wetland.
When our young family first crested the rise along Victor Harbor Road from the north and gazed down into the Southern Vales, the diversity that greeted us conjured images of a promised land. A patchwork vision of pasture, woodlands, cereal crops, almond orchards and settlements was held securely by the rolling undulations of Willunga Escarpment easing to the glimmer of gulf waters in the west. Thirty-six years on and the view over Willunga Basin, from any angle, still makes my heart lift. But it could easily have been otherwise. I remember a warning letter in the local rag from a southern suburbs resident who wrote lovingly of the creeks, almond orchards and ancient redgums that he’d taken for granted until they were inexorably paved over. He would be gratified to know that the Willunga Basin has attracted plenty of people alive to the necessity for protection of the natural environment. Those individuals with vision, a willingness to act
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and a talent for collaboration are to thank for the natural diversity of the Basin today. A group I turned to, Friends of Willunga Basin (FOWB), evolved from a coalition formed to oppose a marina at Silver Sands. We have them to thank for the gloriously uninterrupted stretch of beach and, ultimately, for the protection of the ephemeral wetlands of the Aldinga Washpool. It’s taken many years of advocacy by another coalition of local and Indigenous groups to finally achieve the declaration of a new conservation park. The Park links the Aldinga Scrub with the Washpool and adjoining land that could so easily have been sold for housing. ‘From the start, FOWB was concerned with preventing urban sprawl and the idea of a mega city stretching south,’ David Gill, a founding member of FOWB, tells me. ‘At this time, the community was divided on future choices…There was pressure for development by land speculators and state government population projections assumed that the Willunga Basin would eventually be urbanised. However, the community elected environmentally aware members to the then Willunga Council who helped to change the focus. The Council engaged in a strategic planning process which made a case for conserving land within the Basin.’
