This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

21st February 2009

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Shhh ... come a little closer and I’ll share one of Jo’burg’s best-kept secrets with you.

If you don’t live in Victory Park, Craighall Park, Linden or Blairgowrie, the chances are you haven’t heard of the huge “green lung” enclosed by these suburbs: Delta Park. You’d think that 104 hectares of grass, trees, dams and animal life in the middle of South Africa’s biggest city would not go unnoticed. But, after buying a house about two hundred metres from the park’s western border, I’ve discovered that using it as a reference point when giving directions to visitors is futile – the most common response is, “Where the hell is Delta Park?”

Delta might not have the rose gardens and watersport appeal of Emmarentia; or the fancy restaurant of Zoo Lake; or the stone-age history of Melville Koppies; or, indeed, the recently-acquired struggle hero kudos to complement the waterfall at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens. But it does have in abundance those commodities that are altogether rare in Johannesburg: space, fresh air and tranquillity.

I’ll admit, I’m unashamedly biased – I practically grew up in Delta Park. My primary school organised fun runs there. The leaders of my scout group would send us there on a Friday night to follow impossible orienteering courses with only a compass, a map and the light of the moon to guide us. On hot days, a group of boys and girls would lie on blankets under the trees, flirt, drink Coke and, in a rush of adolescent independence, tell ourselves we were having that terribly mature thing called a picnic.

Of course, revisiting the cherished places of your childhood can be a dangerous exercise. Either everything has changed, which is altogether depressing; or nothing has changed, which (if you grew up under apartheid) is equally depressing. But since moving back to Jo’burg after more than a decade living elsewhere, I’ve found Delta to offer just the right kind of continuity – in fact, the only important kind of continuity – in the natural cycles that, year by year, remind weary city folk of their ancestral connection to flora and fauna.

In spring, against all expectations after a brown, dry Highveld winter, the trees put on a display to rival the brightest Japanese cherry blossoms. The summer rains turn everything lush and emerald green and overgrown. Autumn brings crisp mornings and a layer of leaves to crunch underfoot. Even winter has its own attractions – the stark silhouettes of branches reflected in icy ponds, confirming what Roy Cambell wrote about this time of year: it is “the paragon of art, / That kills all form of life and feeling / Save what is pure and will survive”. And so the cycle starts again.

Walking in Delta Park, one is never too far from the city – from certain vantage points, you can look across the valley and see both the old CBD and, away to the north, the new high-rises of Sandton. Yet these concrete-and-glass structures are put into proper perspective, receding into the background while the foreground is dominated by vegetation and, in some corners, more welcome signs of human presence in the form of jungle gyms or mountain bike tracks.

The soundscape is equally comforting: walk a few hundred metres into the park and traffic noises fade into a general quiet broken only by birdsong and the wind blowing in the trees, with occasional yelps of delight from children on swings, or the bark of a dog.

But let’s not get too sentimental. In one sense, Delta is really just an old shithole. Literally. Its history goes back to 1934, when the municipality established the Delta Waterworks to deal with the increasing sewerage treatment needs of the growing metropolis. For the next thirty years, Delta was one of four major plants dealing with the unwanted effluent of the expanding suburbs, until relieved of its duties by the massive Northern Disposal Works. In 1963, after the machines were turned off, it was decided to allocate some of the surrounding area for housing and hand over the rest to the Parks and Recreation Department. It wasn’t until 1973, however, that the park was actually laid out. Clearly, this was fertile ground – it was soon a verdant corner of the city, with rolling lawns and a miniature wetland fed by a series of dams and the Braamfontein Spruit.

The Witwatersrand Bird Club asked the city council to establish a bird sanctuary within the park. Enter Norman Bloom, whose name would subsequently become synonymous with Delta. Bloom and his brothers, Dave and Harry, had proposed building bird baths at various spots in Johannesburg in memory of their late mother, herself an enthusiastic twitcher. This modest project was expanded, and within a few years the Florence Bloom Bird Sanctuary was created.

There are currently over 200 bird species in the sanctuary and surrounds, and they are carefully monitored by well-known avian expert Geoff Lockwood. Not being much of a birder myself, I’m content to recognise the regulars: plovers, shrikes, swallows, ducks and, of course (a personal favourite) the not-so-humble hadeda. It may look clumsy waddling around suburban gardens, but at Delta the hadeda is king – and hearing that distinctive call as a flock takes off over your head, you start to understand why the ancient Egyptians worshipped the “Sacred Ibis”. There are numerous owl breeding pairs and, if you’re lucky, you might see a Spotted Eagle or Barn owl sitting implacably on a low tree branch.

Bloom also took charge of restoring the Art-Deco structure that was previously the main building of the Delta Waterworks. It had fallen into disrepair and was in fact condemned to be demolished, but the energetic art-and-antique dealer (his environmental activism was a “hobby”) raised funds for its renovation. What was initially planned as a museum is now the Delta Environmental Centre, where pretty much any day of the week you can find a group of schoolchildren learning about the water cycle, southern Africa’s various ecosystems, or the root system of a fig tree. According to Executive Officer of the centre, Di Beeton, about 20,000 people move through the centre each year – so perhaps Delta’s not such a secret after all.

The task of looking after Delta falls to City Parks, and there are numerous challenges, from trying to keep alien vegetation at bay (such as black wattle and the rampant poplars, which were introduced during the Second World War to produce wood for matches) or removing water hyacinth from the dams. There are also, of course, human invaders. A few years ago, a property developer proposed turning Delta into an enclosed housing estate; fortunately, this was quashed after a popular outcry and a formal petition.

Beeton points out that such a development would make Delta exclusive rather than inclusive – after all, like other city parks, it is supposed to be accessible to everyone. This accessibility does, of course, bring disadvantages: as in all public spaces in Johannesburg, safety is a concern. Certainly, I wouldn’t go orienteering in Delta late at night, as I did twenty years ago. But regular “sweeps” by the SAPS, City Parks and Jo’burg Metro Police, combined with the efforts of community policing and a private security company, have drastically reduced criminal activity.

So bring the kids, bring the dogs, bring the bikes – but just don’t tell too many people about Delta. The locals like to keep it hush-hush.