Lumen Waite 100 - Flipbook - Page 12
The Urrbrae Gatehouse, pre-deconstruction.
Brick by brick
The laborious reconstruction of the Urrbrae Gatehouse
is about more than retention of the built form.
once look out the back porch and see only trees. “Now I
walk out to the back porch, and there’s this hole where trees
used to be, which is just roofs, basically,” she says. This new
loss, she was not willing to bear.
In the early 1880s, Peter and Matilda Waite decided their
expansive Urrbrae Estate, now the University of Adelaide’s
Waite campus, deserved a more formal entrée. They ordered the construction of Urrbrae Gatehouse, which for its
early life was used as the home of the estate’s Head Gardener and their family, giving it its secondary title: The Lodge.
Joanna spoke about her fears with a friend, and the
two decided to make a banner decrying the destruction
of trees for the sake of widening a road. They stood at
the intersection and bandied their sign, hoping to gain
attention. “People were winding their windows down
saying, ‘Hey, what’s this about?’” she recalls. “When we
told them, there was a lot of shock-horror about the trees,
but the thing that got everyone going was the Gatehouse.”
Memories of those who lived in the Gatehouse linger
in the community, with Curator of the Waite Arboretum,
Dr Kate Delaporte, familiar with stories from people who
remember it as a student residence. “You talk to people,
‘Oh, my grandpa lived in that house when he went to
Urrbrae High School’,” she says.
Enquiries from punters through rolled-down windows
evolved into calls from local media – newspapers, TV and
radio – and public discussion ensued. Many said the loss
of the Gatehouse would be a travesty, yes, but to whip up
fear was unwarranted, as it was protected by State Heritage.
This turned out not to be the case.
Well into the Gatehouse’s second century standing
on the Waite property, a threat to its existence emerged.
In 2019, the state government announced a series of
intersection upgrades across metropolitan Adelaide,
which included a widening of the intersection at Fullarton
and Cross roads. The news was reported innocuously at
first, but soon local residents began to realise this would
likely impact the Waite campus.
In his capacity as Commissioner of Highways, Stephan
Knoll had the power to “acquire by agreement or
compulsory process any land, or interest in land, for the
purposes of present or future roadwork”. He said this in
a letter to the Federal Member for Boothby at the time,
Nicolle Flint, while also promising to “deliver the best
“My first thought was ‘Oh my goodness, what is going
to be left at that corner?’” says Joanna Wells, one such
resident. Joanna had already seen significant canopy loss
in her Netherby neighbourhood, where she says she could
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