Newsletter - December 2026

This is the December 2025 newsletter for the St Peters Residents Association, representing the Residents of St Peters, College Park, Hackney, Stepney, Maylands, Evandale & Joslin.

Contents

Items that we hope you will find of interest include: -

Membership subscriptions for 2026 are due for renewal by 31st December.
Please refer to the membership page for more details.

Stobie Pole Art by Travis Cox

Sunflowers Stobie Pole Mural

Good news for residents of NPSP! Council has finally approved guidelines for Stobie pole art! The development of these guidelines marks a positive step forward for those wanting to brighten their streets with community-created artworks. Both painted and mosaic artworks are now permitted, bringing NPSP in line with other councils that have long embraced this uniquely South Australian form of public art. All you need is a little imagination and some conversations with your neighbours!

Council's guidelines are in addition to the existing SA Power Networks approval process, so residents should seek SAPN approval first, then engage with nearby neighbours, particularly those with a direct line of sight to the pole. The Council's Arts Officer will review applications based on criteria including inoffensive content, social acceptability, and originality. For residents planning multiple artworks on a single street, additional considerations around curation and community engagement will apply.

SPRA welcomes this development and looks forward to seeing residents finally able to contribute their talents within our own community. The NPSP website has all the required details at Artist Opportunities - Stobie Pole Art. We encourage members to take advantage of this opportunity to enhance our streetscapes and would love to hear about your Stobie pole art projects – please share your experiences at info@stpeters.org.au.

Dunstan Candidates Forum - 4 March 2026 at 7pm

The St Peters Residents Association, in conjunction with the Residents Associations of Norwood, Kent Town and Kensington, and the Maylands Evandale Stepney Community Network Group, is hosting a Town Hall Candidates Forum in the leadup to the State Election for the voters in the seat of Dunstan.

The date of the election is Saturday 21 March 2026, with the forum being just before early voting begins.
The venue will be the St Peters Banquet Hall, St Peters Street, St Peters on 4 March 2026 at 7pm
An invitation will be extended to all candidates.

Each candidate will be allowed time to canvas the local issues and to give their vision for the electorate. The audience will be given an opportunity to ask questions of the candidates to help decide who should represent them in the State Parliament.

All residents are welcome to attend this important meeting. The Dunstan Candidate Forum - 4 March 2026 will be updated with more information.

SPRA Annual General Meeting - 4 March 2026 at 6:15pm

The AGM of the Association will be held prior to the Candidates Forum at 6.15pm on the 4th March.

All members are urged to attend.

If you are not already a SPRA member, please refer to the membership page or join on the night and be eligible to help select the 2026 Committee.

The meeting will be short so that we can proceed with the Candidates Forum.

Ann Street, Stepney Zebra Crossing Delayed

The mooted zebra crossing outside Coles on Ann Street Stepney has again been kicked down the road, with Council failing to approve delivery within the current 2025-26 financial year. This is disappointing when council approved $4.2 million to upgrade less than 100 metres of George St in Norwood.

At the October Council meeting the elected members unanimously resolved –
That staff prepare a funding submission for the construction of a pedestrian crossing on Ann Street, as part of the 2026-2027 Budget, given the projected increase in costs to deliver the project.

So, it will be at least another year or more before anything is done, if ever, to improve pedestrian safety in Ann Street.

Photo of Eric Vivian Holland Martin

Vivian Holland Martin Added to Memorial

The St Peters Residents Association received grants from the State Government to enable bronze plaques with the names of those men from the former St Peters Council area to be attached to the St Peters Heroes Memorial at the intersection of First Avenue and St Peters Street. The two plaques with the names of 145 local men who died in the Great War were unveiled by Governor Hieu Van Le on Anzac Eve 2019. On Remembrance Day last year, a third plaque was unveiled by the current Governor Frances Adamson with 89 more names of those who died in the Second World War.

One of the names on the Great War plaques is that of Eric Vivian Holland Martin. The Martin family home was in Palm Place, Hackney. Palm Place was just off North Terrace and is now within the grounds of St Peter’s College. Eric Martin was an accountant and enlisted May 1915. The next month he was on his way overseas. Later in the year he was diagnosed with renal tuberculosis and returned home.

After his return, Eric became deeply involved in advocating for returned soldiers, helping to construct the constitution of the Returned Sailors & Soldiers Imperial League, and becoming the League’s Vice-President in 1918. He was also sat on the Cheer-Up Society’s Board.

Tragically, after enduring ongoing suffering from tuberculosis and pneumonia, Eric took his own life in 1919, leaving a wife and two young children.

During SPRA’s research on the names to go on the plaques it was realised that Eric’s name was not recorded on either the National War Memorial on North Terrace or the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, as at the time suicide was not recognised as a war casualty.

As a result of lobbying over several years by SPRA and the Virtual War Memorial Australia, Eric Martin has now been recognised for inclusion on both memorials. On Remembrance Day, Eric’s name was finally placed on the North Terrace Memorial with a special unveiling by the Governor and Eric’s grandson, David Martin. The Association was recognised in the speech for the part it played and was officially represented by Vice President David Cree.

You can read Eric's story, including the full citation that was delivered on the day of the unveiling.
The Service was live streamed and remains available on youtube.

Suggestions for Council Budget 2026-27

The Council will shortly begin deliberations on next year’s budget.

SPRA would like to hear from you about projects and works that could be considered when the budget is being prepared. They could be small things like new tree planting locations or major projects like a skate park.

Send your suggestions to the committee - info@stpeters.org.au.

Extra Carparks and No Front Door

Or How to make houses uglier and streets more dangerous, courtesy of Planning Minister Nick Champion

Extra space for larger garages for new homes is now proposed by the State Government to ensure that more car parking on site will result in less vehicles parked on residential streets and that garages will be suitable for today’s large SUV and Utes

However, the Planning Minister Nick Champion in a speech to Parliament on introducing this Bill, acknowledged that this change would make house construction more expensive and drew attention to other changes in the Planning and Design Code, including

  • Removing the guideline seeking a habitable room facing the street
  • Removing the guideline seeking a 2.4m wide window facing the street and replacing it with a 1 x 1m window (which would no longer need to be from a habitable room)
  • Removing the guideline that for single storey dwellings, garages should be no more than 50 per cent of the frontage width of a site and
  • Adjusting guidelines relating to front doors so that dwellings on frontages of 6m or less may no longer have pedestrian entrances, and that on sites less than 4.5m wide the entry should be via a garage.

These changes jeopardise principles of passive surveillance which have been established in the planning system for a long time and allow developments with little interface between the private and public realms. Neighbours who enter their houses through carports often have little interaction with their neighbours. Also, double carports which exceed 50 per cent of the frontage width of a site dominate streetscapes and have been recognized as poor quality design. So these changes appear to compromise not only design quality, but also quality of life in these dwellings and the streets in which they will be built.

According to InDaily, Labor’s changes would have accompanied the Statutes Amendment (Vehicle Parking and Urban Renewal) Bill 2025, making it mandatory for one-bedroom dwellings to have one vehicle park, while dwellings with two or more bedrooms would need to have at least two vehicle parks. The Urban Development Institute of Australia thinks the change on removing front doors “is actually a mature design response to managing scarce land and helping people to live more effectively”.

But the Australian Institute of Architects SA leader Craig Glasson told InDaily that front doors were important as “they do more than just let you in. They put eyes on the street, they make it clear where visitors and emergency services should go. What we wouldn’t like to see is street-facing homes that look more like dunny lanes. When you go to the back lanes of some of the established suburbs, – multiple garages, that’s all you see” he said.

Our Association is strongly in favour of retaining front doors and larger windows in a habitable room facing the street. And getting cars off streets.

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Please remember to renew your membership if you haven't already done so.