Vale Bob Giles

Conservation SA honours environmentalist Bob Giles.


MEDIA RELEASE
23 January 2025

Robert James (Bob) Giles (23.10.1933 – 28.12.24) 

Bob Giles was a kind, gentle, thoughtful and very principled union and environmental stalwart, one of the first to connect union to community to promote an environmentally sensitive and socially just society and economy. As a Plumbers Union official in the 1960s and 1970s, he became involved with, and a leader in SA of, the ‘Green Bans’ movement, in which unions allied with local communities to preserve publicly valued built heritage, and protect and expand public greenspace and native vegetation.


One legacy of Bob’s leadership in Para Hills (where he lived for 62 years) and in his union, along with his passion for the environment, is “The Paddocks” at Para Hills West developed from the mid 1970s, resulting in much more green open space, wetlands, many sporting fields, improved urban stormwater management, and medium density housing (about 50% more housing units) than in the original plan, that also had minimal green open space. Later the Paddocks was a key site in developing a way to store the treated stormwater in the aquifer, available for later use. R J Giles Reserve is next to The Paddocks’ first wetland.

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