Technical Tour 1: Port Adelaide – living shoreline and mangroves trail

Join us for an afternoon exploring two key sites north of Adelaide in the Port Adelaide region, digging into the intersections of culture, ecology, and coastal engineering.

Our trip begins at Yitpi Yartapuultiku in Port Adelaide see https://participate.cityofpae.sa.gov.au/yitpiyartapuultiku), an Aboriginal Cultural Centre co-designed with Kaurna custodians. Here, a First Nations leader will share insights into the site’s cultural significance, followed by talks from a landscape architect and a coastal engineer discussing the innovative living shoreline project, an initiative aimed at restoring natural tidal flows and enhancing habitat resilience.

Following this, we’ll head north to the St Kilda Mangroves, a vital ecosystem that experienced significant dieback in 2020 due to hypersaline brine leakage from nearby salt ponds. A coastal ecologist will provide insights into the causes of this environmental event and discuss ongoing recovery efforts, including natural regeneration and community led restoration initiatives. After the talk, there will be time to walk the mangrove trail and observe the ecosystem firsthand.

Technical Tour 2: Adelaide Metropolitan coastline

Join us to explore Adelaide actively managed metropolitan coastline. The tour will cover the unique features of this coastline and history of management approaches over the last 50 years, including the sand backpassing pipeline from Glenelg to Kingston Park and the West Beach and Henley Beach sand replenishment programs.

This tour will have key insights shared and discussed by representatives from the Department of Environment and Water (DEW) Coast Unit and the sand pumping system operators, McConnell Dowell. The tour will also be accompanied by knowledgeable DEW Coast Unit team members to share in the history and learnings of managing Adelaide’s metropolitan coastline.