Clean Up Australia Day, on the first Sunday in March every year, is a great event invoking community spirit right across the nation.

This year the terrible floods across Queensland and New South Wales forced the cancellation of many planned Clean Up events, but here in Adelaide we had three separate events in your Park Lands.

The SA Road Runners Club decided to get in early with a Clean Up day on Saturday 5th March organised by Ted Jennings. The location, Bullrush Park / Warnpangga (Park 10), is where the club conducts running events on the 2.2 kilometre Uni Loop around Park 10.

Friends of Narnungga Urban Forest had some success recruiting locals from Mile End and Thebarton to fill these bags during an afternoon session on Sunday 6 March in Park 25, organised by Suzanne Lang.

But the biggest turnout (and the largest load of collected rubbish) was in Helen Mayo Park, the site of the State Government's proposed Riverbank Arena. This was APA's featured cleanup and we were thrilled to have 16 volunteers traversing all over the Park, collecting much more rubbish than could fit in our bags.

We'll be doing another CleanUp day in September this year.

Cleaning up your Park Lands is part of our "Restore" stream of activities. We're also planning a re-greening effort on bitumen former netball courts in Bonython Park / Tulya Wardli (Park 27).

We’re holding a poster design competition to spark a wave Park Lands re-greening. Entries are open until 1 May.