REPORT TO ANNUAL MEETING OF ADELAIDE HILLS HERITAGE GROUPS
Tuesday, 1.4. 2008 at Uniting Church Hall, Mann Street, Mt Barker.
Hahndorf Branch, National Trust of SA
Chairperson, Anni Luur Fox
Members of our Branch meet sporadically, due mostly to time and work constraints. We tend to communicate via email which can be done at any hour if it is impossible for people to commit to a particular meeting date. Our members with a wide range of skills and interests are active in a variety of ways that contribute hugely to community cultural development: volunteering at the Hahndorf Academy; conducting painstaking research; maintaining our Wiki website; liasing with other organisations; lobbying for conservation; dealing with government and its agencies. Some of our members own State Heritage sites which require knowledgeable maintenance. A distinguishing mark of our Branch since its founding in 1976 has been its role in raising public consciousness about conservation and ensuring such principles are enshrined in various mutations of the first Hahndorf Supplementary Development Plan that resulted from our first foray to the courts from 1977-79.
A SUMMARY OF THE YEAR’S WORK, apart from the above ongoing works.
1. Conservation works on four canvas wing panels painted in 1901 by Carl Bom for the Hahndorf Institute. Branch historian wrote a short booklet for the 50th anniversary of the front hall.
2. Production of a CD of photographs held in private hands and posted on our website.
3. Set up an exhibition of a selection of photographs of Peramangk Rock Art sites donated to us by Robin Coles and the late Richard Hunter. This took place for the centenary of Macclesfield Primary School.
4. St Michael’s Lutheran Church extension within the Hahndorf State Heritage Area. This threatened to severely compromise the remnant cemetery and thus the significance of the site itself. Having alerted the Church and Council to its heritage value we ultimately lost faith in the official processes formulated to protect such sites. After some months of concerted effort, we had to request intervention by the Minister for Environment and as a very last resort, the media. There appears to have been a U-turn by officials but a question mark still hangs over the project.
5. South Verdun Floodplain. Planning SA contracted Maunsell to formulate a Master Plan for a low-key development of the former petrol station and Boral sites as a park. The Minister for Planning had purchased the sites for $1.5 million in February 2006 and thus saved us a week of argument before the full Bench of the Environment, Resources and Development Court. In 2007 we supplied research data included in the draft plan.
6. Pioneer Women’s Trail/ Footbridge over Onkaparinga River at South Verdun. Although the Trail was officially opened in April 2007, for a range of reasons it was only marked to Silver Road, Verdun for the time being. The President of Walking SA and I have written to the Executive Director of the Department of Transport, Energy and Infrastructure to request a clip-on bridge. He rang on 17 March to give verbal permission for such a bridge but we would have to raise the cost of $50,000. The department would supply plans.
7. The Art Gallery of SA requested information about a photograph by Edmund Diederich which we supplied, for their “A Century in Focus” exhibition of photographs from 1840- 1940.
