Published on 30 October 2023
Onkaparinga Now turns five!
Happy birthday to us!
Onkaparinga Now was launched by the City of Onkaparinga in October in 2018 as a way for the community to source local news.
Five years, 20 print magazines and 650,000 website page views later, we thought it’d be worth looking back at Onkaparinga Now’s top stories over the journey, as clicked by you.
The publication exists to keep the community informed about key Council outcomes, services, programs and projects; and to help provide a local context around major projects and issues of regional importance. We also aim to promote the people, places and businesses that make Onkaparinga great.
Don’t forget you can subscribe to receive the site’s top stories direct to your email inbox each month, and keep an eye out for the quarterly magazine with your rates notice or at select locations across the region.
Thanks to everyone who has stopped by over the past five years! Without further ado, here are the top 10 most-clicked stories of all time.
Our 2021 story on ‘that big white house at Port Noarlunga’ continues to find new audiences as it gets reshared on social media every few months by curious residents. Is there a famous/recognisable/mysterious landmark in your suburb you’d like Onkaparinga Now to write about? Drop us a line at onow@onkaparinga.sa.gov.au
There was a real buzz in the community when the state government announced Happy Valley Reservoir would open to the public for the first time in 120 years.
That buzz reached fever pitch when the opening date was revealed for December 2021, sending a cavalcade of clicks our way.
Anyone driving through Onkaparinga’s southern areas will know there are big changes afoot for the region’s road network, including the duplication of Main South and Victor Harbor Roads.
Our 2021 story sharing the final designs for the project continues to attract clicks to this day. For the most up-to-date information on the joint Australian and South Australian government project, visit the Fleurieu Connections Alliance webpage.
If there’s one thing we learnt while trawling through our website analytics, it’s that Onkaparinga folk really love a good trail. Case in point—our April 2022 story about the opening of the 130-kilometre, volunteer-built Willunga Basin Trail.
It has been heartening to see so many Onkaparinga residents read this 2019 story to find out what can and can’t go in their green bins—thanks for doing your bit to reduce waste to landfill!
For the most up-to-date information on what you can reuse, recycle and dispose of safely, check out the council’s A-Z disposal guide.
While Onkaparinga Now’s birthday is a cause for celebration, it’s got nothing on the much-loved Port Noarlunga jetty, which turned 100 years old in December 2021.
The July school holidays in 2020 were mostly like any other—filled with fun activities at council’s libraries, youth and community centres, and nature places. However, news that ice skating would return to Onkaparinga for the first time in four years at Colonnades’ old Masters building really got people talking.
Onkaparinga Now was only a month or so old when the City of Onkaparinga’s previous Council was sworn in (in 2018), so our audience was still finding its feet. The swearing in of the new Council in November last year, however, saw a huge amount of traffic on the site, as people flocked to see who’d be representing them for the next four years.
Did you know you can add your clubs, community groups and events to the City of Onkaparinga’s website to attract new audiences and interest? MyCity Onkaparinga was launched in June 2021, and the free portal allows residents to register for an account and then create events, community directory listings or sporting club listings. Get onboard if you haven’t already!
Onkaparinga residents are an arts-loving bunch, and our annual Adelaide Fringe guide down south is always one of our most popular stories. This yarn from 2022 did particularly well as the festival’s centrepiece spectacular drone artwork show, SKY SONG, was hosted in McLaren Vale.
Honourable mentions
Just missing out on a top 10 spot at number 11 was the incredible story of a young Onkaparinga woman, Season, who didn’t leave her home for 20 years, in what reads more like a movie script than a council news story. Have a read to see what Season’s up to now, and learn how council’s environmental health officers played a role in her journey.
At number 12, the opening of South Australia’s largest household recyclables facility at Seaford Heights in November 2021 got a lot of attention, with the Southern Materials Recovery Facility now processing the yellow bin recyclables of more than 360,000 residents across Southern Adelaide. The story is a prime example of councils, state and federal government, and the private sector joining forces to help the environment and deliver better results for ratepayers, and our environmentally conscious readers lapped it up.