by Shane Sody
An Adelaide institution is celebrating its 10th birthday during the S.A. History Festival this month.
Since May 2014, the #adelaideparklands #picoftheday has been running on social media; displaying thousands of different views of the world-unique treasure that is your Open Green Public Adelaide Park Lands.
This was the very first #adelaideparklands #picoftheday on 20 May 2014. It shows canna lillies (that have since been removed) near the Park Lands Trail in Peppermint Park / Wita Wirra (Park 18).
So who has been taking these pics, and posting them for the world to see?
To begin, in 2014, APA's Shane Sody was taking most of the pics and sharing them first on Facebook, then later on Instagram, and Flickr.
Starting in 2022, the role was taken over by APA's content creator, Carla Caruso, who has been carefully curating the #picoftheday with the assistance of dozens of other contributors.
Shane Sody (left) and Carla Caruso
Today, the #adelaideparklands #picoftheday is a team effort, crowdsourced from among a wide cross-section of the community.
As the 10th anniversary rolls around, the full collection of #adelaideparklands photos now numbers more than 4,400. It's still growing on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adel_park_lands/
Over time, this immense photo library has become an historical record, as many of the features in your Park Lands have been affected by landscaping changes.
One example of Adelaide Park Lands history: this grove of white poplar trees (characterised as "woody weeds") that were removed in 2021 to make way for the new wetland created the following year in Victoria Park / Pakapakanthi (Park 16).
More controversially, the #adelaideparklands #picoftheday archive also includes historical images of dozens of trees that were destroyed over the past decade to make way for State Government building projects:
An #adelaideparklands #picoftheday from May 2015. Many of the trees in this photo were destroyed in 2016, to make way for an O-Bahn bus tunnel in Rymill Park / Murlawirrapurka (Park 14).
An #adelaideparklands #picoftheday from August 2017. This blue gum and flower bed were destroyed in 2016, to make way for the Botanic High School in Frome Park / Nellie Raminyemmerin Park (Park 11)
An #adelaideparklands #picoftheday from 2022. These trees: blue gums, coral gums, a Moreton Bay fig, and Aleppo pines were destroyed in 2023, to make way for a new Aquatic Centre in Denise Norton Park / Pardipardinyilla (Park 2)
With a wide choice of contributors offering their photos to share, the #adelaideparklands #picoftheday has featured some stunning images over the past 10 years from both amateur and professional photographers.
The Park Lands imagery has ranged from close-up macro studies of individual flowers and insects, to action sports pics, stunning aerial panoramas from drones, major festival crowds, picturesque sunrises, and much more.
Each contributor to the #adelaideparklands #picoftheday is acknowledged with their published photos.
There are so many contributors that it would be impractical to acknowledge them all in this article, but among the most prolific contributors have been:
Adelaide Aerial @adelaide_aerial
City of Adelaide @cityofadelaide
Fiona Caulfield @loveaustralia_travel
Fran Mussared @franmuzz
Tony Sinclair @tony_of_adelaide
James Elsby @jameselsbyphotographer
Helen Hutton @adelaidewriter
Chris Gascoigne @gascoigne.chris
Andrejs Jaudzens @horsesofnorthadelaide
Nick Munday @adelaideurbanbirding
Fanny McKracken @fannymckracken
Tully Haines @tullyadl
Mary Jose @fabricoflife
Chris Colhoun @colhoun
Romeo, Kharen & Maya @dearlittlemango
Keith Murris @the_spare_minute_runner
The Arty Peach @_peachyarts_
Ian Buckland @ian.buckland
Sue Lewis @suelewis3071
Even a few dogs have contributed, such as:
a miniature daschund: @rubi.star19 and
two therapy moodles: @arlo_the_cancer_service_dog_
Our apologies for what we know must be many omissions from this list!
If you Love Your Park Lands, you too can contribute a #picoftheday by simply tagging any photo on social media: #adelaideparklands.
The stunning banner image at top of this page was published as the #adelaideparklands #picoftheday on 17 September 2014, but we’ve mislaid the name of the photographer!
