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Parks and Recreation Collection – Narratives

Determining appropriate land use

Updated on date by author

The brief internal paper Determining Land Use was written in 1984 as a guide for staff of the Metropolitan Parks Branch of the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works. During that era (1980s), the Branch was taking occupation of numerous properties zoned Proposed Public Open Space, many of them worn out or run down (given that sale to the Board was more or less inevitable). Field staff were required to assess properties and decide whether to manage them for environmental conservation or develop for some form of public recreation, or something else. The paper is signed by Tony Whitham, but is marked in Trevor Arthur’s handwriting as by Geoff Edwards.

Roll on two decades, and the same Geoff Edwards in the Department of Natural Resources and Mines in Queensland, wrote a more sophisticated and comprehensive paper with a similar purpose. However, the scope of the land uses that departmental officers (who were the target audience of this Resource Planning Guideline) were from time to time required to evaluate were much broader, covering virtually all the land uses for which various parcels of Crown land could be allocated. This Guideline F9 Determining Most Appropriate Use was published in 2005 and appeared briefly on the Department’s website.

There is a subtext implied by the term “most appropriate use”. This concept is one grounded in public interest, and not in economic profit. It is in tension with the term “highest and best use” that is widely used as the basis of planning in planning schemes and water allocation. “Highest and best” implies the most intensive or economically profitable use (as determined by the market) that can be permitted under the regulations in force; “most appropriate” implies the use that maximises the benefit to the community, deriving from the intrinsic attributes of the land nestled in its locality; with economic potential, being only one criterion. The difference between these two concepts is explained in other papers in this series of Resource Planning Guidelines, obtainable by request to PaRC or from Trove.

 

 

 

Review Status: Pending
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Bushlands Magna Carta

Updated on date by author

It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this modest one-sheet black-and-white leaflet dated October 1969.  From the Save our Bushlands movement, triggered in particular by the Little Desert controversy in the late 1960s, and crystallised in this leaflet, the Victorian Government cancelled the Little Desert development scheme and legislated to create the Land Conservation Council with far-reaching consequences for the disposition of unallocated State Land.

 

 

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Wyperfeld, Albacutya, Hattah and other Mallee parks

Updated on date by author

   Photo of Mallee Fowl on its nest, Little Desert National Park, photo by Clive Crouch.

 

A leaflet dated 1985 includes a list of parks in north-western Victoria and is followed by a nature trail guide for Wyperfeld.

 

This circular letter introduces the Friends of Wyperfeld, established in 1976, the second Friends of National Parks group, following in the footsteps of Friends of Organ Pipes, established in 1972.

 

Guides to Hattah Lakes – Trees, Vegetation, Nature Trails, birds – can be found by entering “Hattah” into the Document Library search box.

 

 

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Little Desert including the National Park

Updated on date by author

The Little Desert in western Victoria, lying south of the Western Highway that links Melbourne and Adelaide, was the subject of an intensive grassroots-led lobbying campaign in the late 1960s against a proposal to clear its native bushland for agriculture. A browse through newspaper archives of the period surprises one even now at the breadth and depth of the opposition to the government’s plans. Libby Robins’ book Defending The Little Desert: The Rise of Ecological Consciousness in Australia of 1998 tells the story.

 

Kaniva Flower Show 1973 – flyer.

The earliest leaflet for the new Park, enlarged from the Kiata Lowan Sanctuary, 1971

Various leaflets by the National Parks Service – birds, the Mallee-Fowl, tourist guides.

Nature trail guides to the Kiata and Pomponderoo trails.

A flyer announcing a ceremony in 2006 to honour long-time Ranger Keith Hateley.

 

A landmark report The Need for Reservations in Desert Settlement resulting from a conference held in Nhill in 1964 is more than just one of the earliest salvos in the debates over land use in the Little Desert; it includes accounts of the contemporary views of district people and also includes appendices with lists of flora and fauna, even though there have been amendments subsequently.

 

A leaflet describing the Friends of the Little Desert by the late and lamented Les Smith of Heatherdale is a testament to the public-spiritedness of the conservation-minded people centred around the Blackburn and District Tree Preservation Society. (See also the post on land-owning cooperatives for reference to another of the BDTPS’s initiatives).

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Melbourne’s Metropolitan Parks – 1974-1990

Updated on date by author

This Post presents a number of documents, mainly by officers of the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works, during the period of establishment and rapid development of that city’s metropolitan parks system.  For details about individual parks, search for their name.

First a compilation of some 13 documents (33 MB) including maps, tracing the evolution of the system “as it happened”.

Some of the documents in this compilation were written for internal purposes and are unpolished. Taken together, they explain what in the words of Denis Simsion, then Deputy Chief Planner commencing at page 41, “The Metropolitan Parks programme and policies of the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works are among the most enlightened and far-sighted of any metropolitan area in the world today.”

Mr Simsion is entitled to take a good deal of the credit for the system, as is Neville Wale, commencing at page 29, who provided much of the intellectual justification. All of Victoria owes a huge debt to these and the other officers and Commissioners who picked up a bright idea and turned it into practice.

The Premier Rupert (Dick) Hamer and Chairman of the Board Alan Croxford should not be forgotten. It is rumoured that the Premier instructed the Chairman that he ought to do something about open space. A figure always larger-than-life, Mr Croxford apparently presented a program to a subsequent Board meeting of more than 50 Commissioners. It is rumoured that as the Commissioners were starting to question the wisdom of making an open-ended commitment  to purchase huge acreages of land (by virtue of zoning as Proposed Public Open Space in the 1971 amendment to the  planning scheme), he cut off the discussion with a brusque command “All right gentlemen, enough debate, all those in favour-against-carried” before any of the sceptics had a chance to object. Thus was born a program of incalculable value to the people of Victoria and beyond.

PaRC Secretary Geoff Edwards writes: “In my capacity as Acting Manager of the Metropolitan Parks Branch in 1985, I was able to personally observe that this public-spirited mentality had endured when I presented a draft platform to the Board (by that time much reduced in number) requiring a multi-million-dollar commitment to capital works and maintenance over the forthcoming year. The Chairman, Ray Marginson, when questioned by a sceptical Commissioner about the implications for the budget, remarked “We will find the money somewhere, borrow it or raise rates or whatever”. If only today’s political leaders could take such an approach towards the fiscal naysayers!

For a concise summarised overview of the metro parks journey, see the separate post by John Senior “Evolution of Melbourne’s Parks and Waterway System“.

 

 

 

 

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Yarra Valley Metropolitan Park

Updated on date by author

Here PaRC reproduces a number of visitor leaflets and other descriptive materials.

Fauna of YVMP handout – about late 1980s. Authored probably by Visitor Services Officer Georgie Waterman and Ranger Patrick Fricker.

Yarra Valley Scats, a staff newsletter, authored by Patrick Fricker in ~1986.

Planting record 1991-1994.

This roneoed report is undated but would seem to date from about the declaration of the Yarra Valley Metropolitan Park in the late 1970s, when the board resolved to develop the park out of the area set aside in the planning scheme as “proposed public open space”. It includes information about the natural features and other characteristics of the area  and the provisions of the planning scheme.

The Great Yarra Parklands: See separate post.

Review Status: Pending
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