Parklands that surround the Adelaide CBD and North Adelaide are almost sacred to South Australians, with any plans to encroach on them or change their usage usually met with a barrage of opposition.
However, the green, contemplative space of Karrawirra, near the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, was for many years the site of a bustling, noisy and smelly commercial enterprise.
It was loved by many and bitterly complained about by others.
Today there are no signs that the Koala Farm run by the eccentric Keith Minchin — the eldest son of the family dynasty that ran the nearby Adelaide Zoo for generations — even existed in the park just north of the River Torrens in North Adelaide.
Popular but controversial
The Koala Farm featured a large range of animals and offered goat and pony rides for children.
It had a wagon pulled by camels and crowd favourites such as Sally the high-diving seal, who would jump from a gum tree into water.
Bands played and a motorised “train” drove visitors around.
It began as the Snake Park and was never popular with the nearby residents of wealthy North Adelaide.
“It was smelly and noisy, particularly with the tannoy,” said historian Patricia Sumerling, the author of The Adelaide Parklands: A Social History.
“The sound system upset the people and the smell wafted over towards the frontage of North Adelaide.”
Some Adelaide residents were also indignant at the running of a commercial enterprise in the parklands.
It was popular, however, with the general public.
Eccentric family owners
Mrs Sumerling said it was cheaper than the nearby, stuffier Adelaide Zoo, which had been started by Mr Minchin’s grandfather and was still run by his father and then his younger brother during the 1920s and 1930s.
Mr Minchin, who was affected by polio in 1931, often had his keepers take his koalas and other animals over to the nearby children’s hospital to entertain the patients in the infantile paralysis wards.
He also sent them to his other creation, the aquarium on the Glenelg jetty.
Chris Daniels, the chair of the foundation Koala Life and Green Adelaide, said the Koala Farm had been extremely popular.
He remembered his father talking about visiting it.
“He loved to go there,” he said.
“He [Mr Minchin] was an interesting guy.”
Mr Daniels said while many of the acts put on by Mr Minchin would not meet modern standards, his running of the park as an open zoo and establishing the aquarium at Glenelg made him ahead of his time.
“He had an experiential zoo because people were holding them and connecting with them and not just looking at them,” Mr Daniels said.
“And he recognised the importance of having an aquarium when nobody else had an aquarium. And we still don’t.”
Koalas released on island
Mr Daniels said Mr Minchin, who had a penchant for reptiles, started with just a snake park but things went “pretty badly”.
“One of his keepers died and another one got his head almost swallowed by a python,” he said.
“He was a fair sort of cowboy so decided to mix snakes with koalas.”
Mr Minchin sourced northern koalas from New South Wales or Queensland.
They attracted many famous visitors to the park.
Mr Minchin and his keepers ran a successful breeding program, something Mr Daniels said was achievement in itself.
Mr Minchin ended up releasing surplus animals into the Adelaide Hills and on Kangaroo Island.
Mr Daniels said it was possible but doubtful that many of the northern koalas taken to Kangaroo Island from the Koala Farm survived, as they were released in unsuitable areas around Mr Minchin’s property at Penneshaw.
Limited legacy in parklands
Mr Minchin’s Koala Farm closed 33 years after the first snakes went on show.
It became a victim of the continuing complaints, with its lease renewed for five years for the last time in 1954.
The snakes, koalas and other remaining animals were moved to the Adelaide Zoo in 1960.
Mr Minchin died at the age of 64 in 1963.
There were many reports of animals escaping the park over the years, with a koala spending the night in a cell at the North Adelaide police station in 1950 after being seen “padding” along Sir Edwin Smith Avenue by a constable.
It was returned to the farm the next morning, but Mr Minchin had a laissez-faire attitude towards his escapee koalas, telling a journalist at the time that they often wandered off and usually returned a few months later.
