Digging deep

19 Oct 2017

Ken Norton of the Probus Club of Mount Gambier was instrumental in the restoration and preservation of one of South Australia’s most beautiful landmarks.

After being repossessed by the government at the turn of the 19th century, the Umpherston Sinkhole, which had been a beautiful garden under its former owner James Umpherston, began to fall into disrepair. Thankfully, Ken Norton had other ideas.

Dreaming big

The Umpherston Sinkhole’s initial salvation came from the Woods and Forestry Department’s employee social club. “They said, ‘Listen, we should do something about this’. And to their credit, they did,” Ken says. The club’s members took it upon themselves to restore the garden. But as time went on, they became less involved.

“Naturally, after a while they got tired of it. But I still had the interest in it, and I was able to keep it alive.” Ken’s passionate desire to return the sinkhole to its former glory paid dividends, and soon more and more people became interested in the beautiful garden that was being grown there. “It got better and better and better, to the extent that people wanted to get married there,” Ken says.

A near miss

When Ken was sent a letter notifying him that he was to be awarded an

Order of Australia medal, he almost didn’t receive it. “I nearly threw it in the bin,” says his wife Elizabeth. Thankfully, the letter got to Ken in the end. “He couldn’t believe it,” says Elizabeth. “He was so surprised.” A legacy of service Apart from receiving an Order of Australia medal for his service and efforts, Ken also has a pavilion in the garden named after him.

He’s very appreciative of his life, and fondly remembers his time working on the sinkhole and the many highlights along the way. “Once, the local theatre people put on the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was the most magnifi cent thing you’d ever seen or heard of,” Ken says. Ken joined the Mount Gambier Probus Club over a decade ago, and has loved getting to know the people he’s met there.

“I’ve lived here for 50 odd years, and there’s a lot of the people at Probus that I knew already, but there’s a lot more that I’ve gotten to know. I never miss a meeting when I’m home. We try to build around that if we can.”