Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about one of the great treasures, alongside our football teams, of the electorate of Port Adelaide—that is, our dolphins. Some years ago the Rann Labor government declared the Port River up to the Gawler River, I think, a dolphin sanctuary—the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary, which is home to about 30 bottlenose dolphins and visited by hundreds more dolphins. It is the world’s first such sanctuary in an urban environment.

I recently met with Dr Mark Bossley, who has been studying the Port River dolphins for some 20 years and is the regional managing director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society of South Australia, to talk to him about the possibility of a dolphin interpretive centre in Port Adelaide. The sanctuary is regularly patrolled by government rangers, but dolphins are still needlessly suffering, often due to carelessness by people who use the river and due occasionally, I have to say, to some malice on the part of humans who think it is fun to attack them. Dr Bossley believes that education is the next extension of the sanctuary in order to provide real safety and security to the dolphins that live in the river.

The society is currently preparing a feasibility study for an interpretive centre in Port River, and I know that such a centre would promote further awareness of the sanctuary and provide visitors with information about these complex and fascinating creatures—their intelligence, their teamwork, their communication abilities and their sociability. Visitors to the centre would be able to learn about the extraordinary dolphin Billy, a wild dolphin who spent a short period of time at a marine park that used to exist in Adelaide called Marineland where he picked up some new tricks.

Honourable Member:

Honourable member interjecting—Free Billy!

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, free Billy. He picked up some new tricks, particularly tail walking—which is actually a trick not known to dolphins in the wild. Once released into the wild, Billy set about teaching other dolphins in the river how to tail walk. I am sure people will remember, particularly those opposite, the phenomenon of moonwalking in the 1980s. I am sure those opposite did that at various discos. This is the dolphin equivalent of moonwalking and Billy has been teaching it to some of the dolphins in the river.

By using displays such as the dolphin’s eye view of the river people can form an emotional connection to these mammals and an understanding of their behaviour. As I visited the river with Dr Bossley we also saw a new calf, the only new calf born in the last three years, who is called Hope. Seeing Hope the calf dolphin and the other dolphins there I could not do anything but wholeheartedly support the society in its bid to create an interpretive centre in Port Adelaide.