Glenthorne National Park-Ityamaiitpinna Yarta, on south edge of Adelaide suburbs, proclaimed in 2020
Glenthorne Farm's colonial history goes back the Major Thomas Shuldham O'Halloran in 1839.
Image courtesy South Australian government department of environment and water
Glenthorne National Park-Ityamaiitpinna Yarta was proclaimed in 2020, including the state-heritage-listed Glenthorne Farm property, a huge open space on the southern end of Adelaide plains suburbs, on Majors Road at O’Halloran Hill, between Main South Road and the Southern Expressway.
In 2019, 3,000 people attended the property to give their ideas for the venture – typical of the people power that had saved the national park vision. Glenthorne National Park-Ityamaiitpinna Yarta precinct would include the farm, O’Halloran Hill Recreation Park, Hallett Cove and Marino conservation parks and Happy Valley Reservoir to span almost 1500 hectares, bigger than Belair National Park.
Glenthorne Farm’s colonial history goes back Major Thomas Shuldham O'Halloran who emigrated to South Australia with his family in 1839 and started Lizard Lodge farm – after Lizard in the north of Ireland. The house was largely built from prefabricated materials brought out on HMS Buffalo.
The major had been in the British Army (mostly in India) for 30 years and, in 1840, was gazetted as South Australia’s first police commissioner. He led the punitive expedition that year to the Coorong where two Aboriginal men were hanged without trial in response to the killing of passengers on the shipwrecked Maria.
When O'Halloran died in 1870, the farm was sold to Thomas Porter who built a far grander three-storey home and, renamed Glenthorne, the farm continued growing crops and grazing sheep. In 1913, Glenthorne Farm was compulsorily bought by the commonwealth as the No.9 depot for the Australian army’s remount branch, responsible for buying and training horses and mules. Glenthorne's role during World World I was censored but Citizens Military Forces camped there in the 1920s.
Glenthorne House and Lizard Lodge were destroyed by fire in 1932 during army training. Two 1913 large iron sheds remained enclosing brick structures south west of the coach house, once used as munitions magazines. They were modernised for storage by the CSIRO (commonwealth scientific industrial and research organisation) that, from 1947-96, ran experimental research at that farm on animal and human nutrition.
When Glenthorne Farm was transferred to Adelaide University in 2001, the government made it clear the land was never to be used for urban development. But the university tried to sell off land for housing to fund a woodland recovery. Strong opposition from local residents stopped this.
The land was transferred by the university to the state government in 2019, opening the way for a national park. While waiting for this, the Friends of Glenthorne Farm had revegetated the area, with the return of native fauna including kangaroos and barn owls. The national park also brought hope for the farm’s heritage buildings to be restored.
