In news sure to sadden both inner children and real, actual children around South Australia, Victor Harbour fun park Greenhills Adventure Park has confirmed it will close after one last summer.
As The Victor Harbour Times reported last week the closure has been on the cards for a while now following the 2009 sale of the property to developers. With plans for 66 housing allotments to be built on the 10 hectare site now in motion, a firm date has now been set.
Greenhills will now close on May 1, 2016, after which it will join Dazzleland, Magic Mountain, Puzzle Park and the Brickworks in that giant fun park in the sky.
First opened in 1982, the park has been a favourite school holidays destination for a generation or two of South Australians, least of whom is Greenhills managing director Meg Whibley.
“It was my parents who started Greenhills originally, 33 years ago,” Whibley says. “It sold six years ago to developers, and we were lucky enough to lease it back. At the time we thought it may only go for two to three years, but we’ve managed to keep it going for six.
“It’s at that stage where the developers are going to start stage one and it has been hard to keep it going, so we decided to put a date on it,” she explains. Although sad to close the book on a long-running venture, the date has given some comfortable certainty to Whibley and her team.
“It’s so hard when you don’t know when you’re going to go on another summer and how much to put into it,” she says. “Now we’ve got the date we can really tell people that this is it, this is our last summer here”.
33 years is a pretty solid run for any business, especially one founded in the years before children discovered Playstations, reality TV and planking as past times de jour. Why, it’s managed to outlive State icons like John Martin’s, Mary Martin’s, the State Bank and Bookworm.
One thing’s for sure though, after May 1 South Australia will be empirically less fun and adventurous.
For more information and one last slide head to the Greenhills Adventure Park site.
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Photograph:
Instagram / @ZephaJackson
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