Letting the light in at Field River

How this weed-choked river is being helped to help itself.

For a long time, this river that snakes through Adelaide’s southern suburbs was hard to see.

In some places, the creekline had narrowed to a dark corridor, hemmed in by invasive exotic trees. The water slowed to a trickle. Light struggled to reach the ground. Even from the walking tracks that thread through the reserve, it was easy to miss.

Now, sections are opening up. Water is visible again. Native shrubs and sedges are even returning on their own.

“You can actually see the creekline now,” said Greening Australia’s Deb Nagloo, who is leading this urban river restoration project. “It always amazes me. Every time I go down there, it’s different.”

A chequered past

The land surrounding Field River holds deep cultural significance for the Kaurna People. Its story since European settlement has been one of decline. By the mid-20th century, much of the area had been cleared for mining and grazing. A quarry operated nearby, and aerial images from the late 1960s show little more than exposed ground.

By the late 1970s, housing and roads began to encroach on either side of the river gully, creating an increasingly narrow urban corridor of green.

Some sections retained pockets of resilience – remnants of native grasses, shrubs, groundcovers and reptile species holding on – but there’s heavy pressure from introduced weeds such as Desert Ash and African Olive crowding out native vegetation.

“My first impressions: hard to get in. We had to battle through the weeds,” said Deb.

Part of the Field River catchment, bounded by houses on the ridgetops to the left, and a highway out of view on the other side. Where’s the river? It’s under that bright green line of trees (mostly Desert Ash) that curves in the right of the photo and passes directly across the foreground to the left. The project is working to restore this section of the creekline in 2026.

Full of potential

Field River sits within the newly declared 177-hectare Kauwi-marnirla (“place of two good waters”) – Field River Conservation Park.

It’s a natural corridor linking Hallett Cove Conservation Park on the coast to remnant woodlands in Itya­mai­it­pin­na Yarta – Glenthorne National Park and other green ‘stepping stones’ that reach up into the foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges.

Ecologically, it offers continuity – the potential for a habitat highway allowing species to move safely and helping them adapt to climatic changes in what’s otherwise a very built up environment.

Socially, it sits ‘smack bang in the middle’ of residential neighbourhoods. People walk their dogs or hike in the river corridor, often unaware of the ecological weight the place carries. Few urban areas have spaces this large and continuous available for restoration.

Without intervention, the degradation would have compounded: a narrowing creek, fewer native plants, less habitat complexity. Fortunately, a number of organisations recognised Field River’s potential over the years, and began working to change its narrative.

Field River is a significant green corridor in Adelaide’s southern suburbs. The sections marked in orange, an impressive 9 kms, are under active restoration through this project.

Clearing the way for recovery

The Field River Waterways Recovery project being led by Greening Australia is building on this previous work by restoring an additional nine kilometres of riparian corridor habitat across 11 priority sites.

On the ground, the work so far has been hard and unglamorous. Most days have been spent clearing, not planting. It’s been slow going, negotiating the rocky creekbed while strategically removing long-established, dense stands of woody weeds and thick, vigorous grasses like Kikuyu and Phalaris.

But once cleared, change has been immediate. Space opened up. Light is reaching the riverbanks. Native sedges are thickening along the water edges. In some places, planting has paused – not because work is finished, but because the river has begun restoring itself. In several sections, native plants are returning without assistance.

“Invasives like Desert Ash suppress light and prevent understorey growth,” Deb explained. “Just by clearing them out, we’re creating space for natives to come through.”

Before (left): Dark and overgrown with weeds. After (right): The creekline has room for recovery.

These responses are reshaping the approach. Where natural recruitment is strong, planting can be reduced and efforts can be shifted to more degraded sections. Where planting does occur, it is dense and defensive: sedges and grasses to stabilise banks and out-compete weedy regrowth, alongside hardy trees adapted to damp soils. Rare and threatened plants are being returned.

Maintenance will matter as much as initial works – but the structure needed to support more complex ecological relationships is beginning to return. Wildlife that will benefit from this new habitat includes woodland birds and Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos.

Rebuilding nature, together

The scale of the restoration needed has brought together many contributors. Greening Australia is coordinating restoration in the creeklines with local contractors; Green Adelaide and National Parks and Wildlife Service SA are supporting this project and other works along the river’s gully slopes. Kaurna people are bringing their cultural knowledge to shape the landscape approach; the Kaurna Fire Team, in particular, are key players in re-igniting cultural practices in the conservation park through cultural burns.

Community planting events at Itya­mai­it­pin­na Yarta – Glenthorne National Park have helped stabilise eroding areas in the upper section of the Field River catchment, giving locals a chance to contribute to the landscape’s recovery. Friends groups have formed and are actively involved in improving the Field River corridor, showing the strong community desire to help in recovery too.

Volunteers being welcomed to Country as part of a planting day for the project, in the upper reaches of the Field River catchment.

Seeing it through

It’s good that there are willing hands, because there’s still much to do. Ground crews are entering a second year of intensive weed removal. Further planting is planned, with thousands of locally appropriate native plants on order. Deb is excited about that.

“With the woody weeds gone, we can bring back species from the nationally endangered Grey Box (Eucalyptus microcarpa) Grassy Woodland community that once occurred here. Less than 3% of its original extent in South Australia is left, so anything we can do to protect the remnants and recreate this vegetation community is vital.”

Restoration at Field River is not ‘one and done’. Once planting is over, then monitoring becomes the priority. It’s about staying with the work: removing pressure, responding to what returns, and adjusting as the system reveals what it needs next.

In places where the light has returned, the river is already answering.

In this rescued section of Field River, the remnant gums can breathe again and now there’s light and space for native plants to grow. Photo: Enviro Solutions SA, with permission from DEW for drone use in this conservation reserve.

This restoration is funded by the Australian Government’s National Heritage Trust under the Urban Rivers and Catchments Program, with support from Greening Australia, SA Department for Environment and Water, Green Adelaide and the City of Marion, in collaboration with National Parks and Wildlife Service SA.

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