Puckridge Park
Puckridge Park
Puckridge Park
Puckridge Park is little package of native bushland for the enjoyment of everyone, maintained by the Rotary Club of Port Lincoln. The Club also uses the park and its sweeping views of Port Lincoln for socail events after working bees and also at other times during the year.
Facilities at the park include:- Free electric BBQ, covered gazebos, tables and seats, toilets & modern disabled playground. This is a wonderful place to enjoy city views only minutes from the city centre.
The native garden area is extensive with gravel paths providing long walking trails.
The park was named after the longest-serving Port Lincoln Mayor, Percival Puckridge.
Puckridge Park Port Lincoln
It was back in 1973 that the Port Lincoln Rotary Club came up with the idea of providing a community flora reserve for the community of Port Lincoln. There was at that time a scrub block of some 8 acres with virgin scrub set aside by the Port Lincoln Council for the purpose.
The first sod was turned a couple of years later by a working bee of just two Rotarians.The delay was owing to a conflict of ideas with the Apex club. The two were the President who initiated the project Mr. Dolph Schlien and the then director of Community service, Mr. George Keil (still a member of the club today). They thought that the project was not going to work as the support was rather poor, however it was not long before things started to take shape. A memorial wall, which was the basis of a viewing point over the magnificent Boston Bay and the township was built with members input and a significant effort by Mr. Norm Stringer, a concrete contractor and stone mason, and there in rests the ashes of Mr. Percival Puckridge who was mayor of Port Lincoln from 1954 to 1967. His wife sponsored the wall with a donation of $1500.
It was about the time when Mr. Leon Barker became president of the Rotary club in 1979 that significant progress was made by lots of working bees and as time passed and hours of club members work there evolved a toilet facility which was constructed right from the foundations by bricks made by the hands of Rotarians, and a presidents walkway. The Rotary President’s walkway has a plaque for every president of the club since 1949. The playground was established to provide a focal point for the children of the community to play and it has since been significantly upgraded with the latest safety features. Over the years there has been many improvements to make the facility arguably, the most used bush park in the Port Lincoln area.
The facility is a credit to thousands of hours of work under the leadership of such Rotarians as Allan Smith, Tom Bascombe OAM, Joe Tippelt, Chas Rowe, Ian Ward, Des Pinson and in recent years Jim Kay. All of these Rotarians have added significant infrastructure to the park with the countless unsung heroes of the Port Lincoln Rotary Club to build a top tourist park which serves the local community as a play ground with BBQ facilities and two rotundas, the Joe Tippelt and Dick Leech facilities.
It now boasts a paved roadway with lots of parking, walkways through the park with significant amounts of native revegetation and benches to take in the magnificent views across the Bay. There were lots of unwanted, introduced, species in the park that have taken hundreds of hours to eradicate. The club spends many hours in maintaining the park to a absolutely clean and tidy area for the enjoyment of community of Port Lincoln.
