Playford Alive

Playford Alive is a partnership between Renewal SA, the South Australian Housing Authority, the City of Playford and the local community.

It involves the renewal of the suburbs of Davoren Park and Smithfield Plains and more than 500 hectares of greenfield development in Andrews Farm, Munno Para, Munno Para Downs and Penfield.

Throughout this community are new facilities including schools, a medical centre, railway station, wetlands and parklands, a $250 million town centre and several new outlets and community facilities.

Situated between Main North Road and the Northern Expressway, Playford Alive is also one of Adelaide’s most connected communities, supported by train and bus services including a new train station at Munno Para.

By the time the project is finished, there will be more than 40,000 people living in the project area.

Since the commencement of the project in 2008, Playford Alive has surpassed a number of milestones. These include:

• The opening of community facilities including three new schools, a medical centre and training facility, the Peachey Place Living Skills Centre, the refurbished John McVeity Centre, Playford Uniting Church, the Stretton Centre and Playford Library, childcare centres, a play café, restaurants, fitness centres, plus several other commercial and retail outlets
• Two new wetlands, plus new and improved parks, including the new state-of-the-art Playford Alive Town Park
• Regeneration of housing and land opportunities in Munno Para, Andrews Farm, Smithfield Plains and Davoren Park
• The creation of approximately 700 residential lots in the renewal area and more than 1,600 lots in the greenfield area
• The renovation of more than 550 public housing dwellings and the construction of almost 300 new public housing dwellings

A large proportion of the housing offered for sale is within the state government’s current affordable price point.

An innovative small lot housing project has been released in conjunction with Rivergum Homes. Called ‘Town Life Living’, aiming to get more first-home buyers into their own homes.

More than $200 million has been spent on civil works, including new roads and new and upgraded stormwater infrastructure.

Since launching in 2008, the Works Program has provided more than 3,400 local people with engagement, training and work experience opportunities through Playford Alive, with over 1,250 securing paid employment to date.

The Adelaide Plains were inhabited by a small tribe, about 650 people, called the Kaurna whose territory went as far north as Crystal Brook south of Cape Jervis, west to the coast and whose eastern boundary was the Mount Lofty Ranges.

Within this area the Kaurna were divided into land-owning groups of some 30 people. Membership of the group was based on family ties created through descent or marriage. These groups led a semi-nomadic existence, spending their time between the coast, the plains and the hills.

The Kaurna, therefore, had quite a varied diet including large and small game animals, fish of varying description, plants and water birds. With relatively simple tools and methods, such as the systematic use of fire on the plains to trap animals overcome by smoke, they were able to utilize their environment to the full without endangering it.

The natural environment found by the early European settlers was one of considerable diversity of both animal and plant life. The Adelaide Plains were characterized by large areas of tall kangaroo grass interspersed with clumps of native trees such as red, blue, stringybark and peppermint gums as well as native pines (called by the settler ‘honeysuckle’) and sheoak trees. Wildlife was also plentiful and often supplemented the diet of the early colonists.

Contact between the early colonists and the Kaurna came with the first landings at Holdfast Bay, where the settlers found to their relief that they were of a “friendly disposition”. As settlement spread onto the Adelaide Plains in the late 1830s and 1840s, the Kaurna were threatened by the destruction of the environment which had sustained them for thousands of years.

Munno Para is Kaurna word meaning ‘Golden Wattle Creek’. Adopted by the local Council in 1853, until amalgamation with Elizabeth lead to the new name of Playford being adopted in 1997.

Source: Aboriginal Place Names in the City of Playford | Playford's Past