by Loine Sweeney

When historian and retired educator, Margaret Ford OAM, leans on the fence to view the historic grove in Kate Cocks Park, she ‘time travels’ back more than 150 years to the early life of the City of Adelaide and the South Australian colony.

As we watch police horses amongst the old olive trees between the old Adelaide Gaol and Bonython Park, Margaret conjures up for me the mid-1800s “when colonists arrived with very little, didn’t know this country and had to produce something that would sell,” she says.

“From the first olive trees brought to our shores by Governor Hindmarsh on the Buffalo, olives proved to be a great success, growing well in South Australia’s climate. The oil was used for all sorts of things: as fuel, a mechanical lubricant and for medicinal purposes. It was a multi-purpose oil and everyone had a bottle of it.”

Margaret’s interest in South Australia’s olive oil story and her passion for preserving the historic groves began over fifteen years ago when she retired from a forty year career in education.

At that time, she became involved with the National Trust’s Beaumont House with its colonial heritage of experimental crops, including olives, and started volunteering as a tour guide.

“I became fascinated with Samuel Davenport’s promotion of olive oil in the young colony. The more I researched the old newspapers, the more I could see there was a much bigger picture about the olives groves around town. We drive past the old olive trees so frequently and yet never know how the early wealth of this State was supported by locally grown and produced olive oil.“

In 2018, Margaret’s dedication to education and history and her decades of work with children and the community was recognized with an Order of Australia Medal in the Queen’s Birthday honours. As a strong advocate for girls undertaking maths and science, she worked against attitudes of previous generations that created gender barriers and cut off girls’ options.

”If anyone tells me I can’t do something, I get stubborn and decide I can do it really well.”

It’s with that ‘can do’ outlook and passion that Margaret has joined the Adelaide Park Lands Association and is considering becoming a Park Ambassador.

She is particularly concerned with threats to the historic olive grove plantations.

“I am passionate about keeping our olive oil history, and the Adelaide Gaol oil trees plays a unique part in that story,” she says.

As she shows me some of the larger, character-laden olive trees, Margaret says the remaining old olive trees laid out in groves in the Park Lands are living memorials of our colonial heritage.

But Margaret rues that the trees are no longer being properly maintained or cared for.

The Adelaide Park Lands Authority has been told that overstocking of police horses has led to "a serious decline in the health of many of the trees" and that the trees are "in decline" due to highly compacted soil and the tendency of the horses, confined in small pens, to eat the bark and cambium layer (the growing part of the trunk which transports water and nutrients).

Given proper care, olive trees can live for thousands of years but the City Council arborist estimates the trees in the SAPOL horse yards - now 158 years old - have only 10 to 20 years of life remaining, at best. An external consultant arborist has similar views noting some olives have already died and urging an immediate reduction in horse numbers, from the current 24 to only ten or fewer.

However SAPOL is committed to keeping horses in Kate Cocks Park. The Park is about to have much higher reinforced fencing to protect the SA Police greys, and keep out the public.

A separate threat to the olives has emerged with the State Government's plan to build a multi-storey car park alongside, and partially overlapping the olive grove here in Park 27.

Margaret believes it’s time to properly protect these historic trees.

"Adelaide Park Lands olives are unique on a global scale, being the only place [as far as we know] where olives were cultivated historically on public or community ground. This makes them as distinctive as the Adelaide Park Lands themselves."

A research paper on Adelaide's historic Park Lands olive plantations was published by Craig Hill in 2006.

http://www.liquidhistory.com.au/Papers/Adelaide%20Parkland%20olives.pdf