Humbug Scrub wildlife sanctuary created by South Australia nature activist pioneer Thomas Bellchambers in 1905
A famous and impressed visitor in 1920 to South Australia's Humbug Scrub wildlife sancuatary, opened by Thomas Paine Bellchambers (at left) in 1905, was writer Arthur Conan Doyle (top centre). The private wildlife sanctuary, northeast of Adelaide, continued to operate into the 21st Century.
Images courtesy Humbug Scrub Wildlife Sanctuary (including by Katelyn King) and Playford Library Service heritage collection
Thomas Paine Bellchambers was a pioneer South Australia nature activist who founded, in 1905, the Humbug Scrub wildlife sanctuary near One Tree Hill, 50 kilometres northeast of Adelaide, that continued into the 21st Century.
Born in England in 1858, Bellchambers arrived in South Australia on the Lightning in 1874 in search of work. He spent between 1881 and 1905 in and around Mannum on the River Murray, where he married Eliza Mary Harmer in 1887 (they had 10 children) and he ran the first local apiary. His intense interest in the environment was greatly influenced by his mother.
Bellchambers wrote many articles for the local newspapers on conservation and the native flora and fauna that he saw slowly degrading: "Nature always provides a surplus for legitimate use, far in excess of needs, to ensure continuance of species …unrestrained, man uses up the capital instead of the surplus and this must, by natural law, end in disaster”. Bellchambers founded the Nature Lovers' League in South Australia and wrote two books: Nature, Our Mother and A Nature Lovers Notebook.
Opening the Humbug Scrub wildlife sanctuary in a natural bush settling in 1905 allowed him to continue studying marsupials and conduct his unique work on mallee fowls. This bird fascinated Bellchambers who documented key factors about the mallee fowls for those who would carry on the work. His efforts were rewarded in 1914 as he became the first person to breed the mallee fowl in captivity. Bellchambers died and was buried at Humbug Scrub in 1929.
Humbug Scrub continued into the 21st Century as a private sanctuary, and South Australia’s oldest, staffed by volunteers, with wildlife roaming freely.
T. P. Bellchambers Reserve, about 10 kilometres from Mannum, was another memorial to the far-sighted naturalist. The reserve was small but significant in protecting a small colony of silver daisy bushes. Olearia pannosa var pannosa was listed as vulnerable under the national Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. There were only around 1,000 of these plants left in the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin, mostly on roadsides. The reserve was rehabilitated from 2009 by local volunteers using state and federal grants. The plant list for the reserve had more than 60 species.
