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Parks and Recreation Collection – Narratives

Author Archives: Neal Ames

MidCoast Public Toilets in Parks Strategy 2025 – 2035

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MidCoast Public Toilets in Parks Strategy

 

Land managers, primarily councils, put a lot of assets into parks and reserves. Sports infrastucture, amenity buildings, playspaces. One of the most significant assets that we provide in our parks are public toilets. Public toilets are built in our parks because it is the only land that councils own, but more importantly, parks are major attractors for visitors, and it is people that are away from their homes, spending long periods of time, that are the main users of public toilets.

 

MidCoast Council has just adopted its new MidCoast Public Toilets in Parks Strategy. We have 108 public toilets in total, and 106 of them are in our parks and reserves. This represents a major investiment, with a single public toilet costing a minimum of $250,000, but often are closer to a million dollars. When you have a hundred of them that is a massive CAPEX investment. But public toilets are also our most expensive OPEX asset as well. They have to be cleaned once or twice a day. And they are also the target of vandalism, with cisterns being broken on a regular basis.

 

A public toilet strategy is a critical planning mechanism, as part of a larger parks planning portfolio.

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Parks and Recreation Portfolio Planning Presentation

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Parks and Recreation Portfolio Planning

 

This is a presentation that I gave at the Parks and Leisure Australia (PLA) 2024 National Conference in Brisbane.

The presentation outlines the portfolio approach to planning for parks and recreation.

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MidCoast Recreational Boating Infrastructure Plan 2024 – 2035

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MidCoast Recreational Boating Infrastructure Plan 2024 – 2035

 

This boating infrastructure plan is part of the MidCoast Parks and Recreation Planning Portfolio.

 

It covers more than a hundred individual boating assets, which include boat ramps, pontoons and jetties, across our coastline, rivers and lakes, many of which are sensitive ecosystems. The Plan not only focuses on the assets but also on the activities that are conducted on the waterways, and which use the facilities. Environmental protection is the main focus of the Plan.

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Waverley Park Plan of Management

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Waverley Park PoM

Waverley Park is located in Bondi Junction in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It is the largest park within the Waverley municipality. It contains passive recreation space, sports facilities, contemporary play facilities and an extensive path network.

 

The WPMP is a contemporary PoM that contains up to date thinking on public open space management and provides the framework for other PoM produced in recent times.

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MidCoast Sports Lighting Plan

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MidCoast Sports Lighting Plan – Final

In 2022 and 2023 MidCoast Council developed the MidCoast Open Space and Recreation Strategy 2023-2035 (OSRS). The Strategy is a twelve-year plan to manage both the public open space in MidCoast along with the activities that take place on that space.

The Strategy includes a comprehensive Action Plan, that detailed many actions that need to be undertaken throughout the public open space portfolio to bring it up to contemporary standards. During the development of the Strategy and its Action Plan it was identified that much of the built facilities located on our public open space, in particular our sports facilities, were at an unacceptable standard, or could be expected to reach the end of their life during the lifecycle of the Strategy.

One of the planning recommendations contained in the Strategy’s Action Plan was the development of a Sports Lighting Plan. The purpose of the Plan is the identification of all existing sports lighting infrastructure, in particular the lighting poles and luminaries, and the identification of new sports lighting infrastructure that would be needed in the future. The Plan deals with sports facilities only and does not detail lighting provided in passive public open space.

The purpose of the Sports Lighting Plan 2023 – 2035 is to:

Deliver a comprehensive and prioritised plan for the provision of contemporary sports lighting to sports facilities in the MidCoast region.

The Sports Lighting Plan 2023 – 2035 aims to:

Provide a plan that will guide Council in planning for and providing infrastructure that meets the community’s needs for night-time sports.

The Plan contains the current asset list as well as a future works schedule for our sports lighting infrastructure.

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MidCoast Outdoor Sports Court Strategy

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MidCoast Outdoor Sports Court Strategy – Final

The MidCoast Outdoor Sports Court Strategy 2023 – 2035 is a critical supporting document to the
MidCoast Open Space and Recreation Strategy 2023 – 2035 (OSRS). The OSRS sets out the vision,
guiding principles and aspirations for our public open space, how we use it and how we care for it. This
Court Strategy is an asset specific planning document focused on one of the components of our public
open space, outdoor sports courts.

One of the eight guiding principles we have adopted in the OSRS is use knowledge and evidence based
management.

Therefore, the Outdoor Sports Court Strategy has been developed based on a foundation of evidence,
and every recommendation contained within the Action Plan is then based on that evidence. This
approach will ensure that in the future every sports court that we have will be where it needs to be and
provide value based on evidence.

The Strategy highlights that sports courts are provided for several different sports, namely; tennis,
croquet, netball, basketball, and emerging sports such as pickleball. Some of these sports have a rich
history in Australia and our region. Sports such as tennis and croquet were introduced in the 1800’s and
many courts were built. You can still see them in our small villages, such as Krimbiki and Killabakh.
These facilities were the centre of each community, with picnics and dances being held at the
community halls often built right next to the tennis or croquet court. People would travel for many miles
to attend these events. There is a legacy with these facilities and the Strategy respects this. The
Strategy also looks at more modern sports such as netball and basketball, and most recently pickleball.

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Victorian Land Management Strategy

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Victorian Land Management Strategy (11MB)

The Land Management Strategy, the first prepared under the Parks Victoria Act (2018), provides strategic long-term directions for how the parks estate will be managed. The Strategy covers all of the Parks Victoria estate; four million hectares across 3,000 land and marine parks – or 18 per cent of Victoria’s land and 70 per cent of its coastline.

The Strategy is the guiding document for all strategies and management plans produced by Parks Victoria and is the document that sets the vision and guiding principles of the sustainable management of the parks estate.

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River Red Gum Parks Management Plan

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River Red Gums Management Plan (20MB)

 

The River Red Gum Parks Management Plan (RRGPMP) is a strategic guide for managing and protecting five national parks and more than 100 other parks and reserves that comprise the planning area in northern Victoria. This plan takes a multi-park approach within a geographic landscape covering over 215 000 ha of parks and reserves.

The RRGPMP is the largest landscape based management plan produced. It covers the Murray, Goulburn and Ovens river corridors. The River Red Gum has been voted the most popular tree in Australia, with its inland river environments presenting the classic Australian ecosystem. Many generations of Australians have camped on these rivers, and have enjoyed the shade under the red gums. A diverse ecosystem of animals depend on the gums as do many towns along the rivers.

This management plan involved a team of authors and took 10 years to complete. It is registered in both the National Library in Canberra as well as being noted by the United Nations. Of particular note is the extensive narrative and actions  in the MP regarding the RAMSAR wetlands that form a significant portion of the landscape.

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MidCoast Open Space and Recreation Strategy 2023 – 2035

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MidCoast Open Space and Recreation Strategy 2023 – 2035 Final (27.5MB)

The MidCoast Open Space and Recreation Strategy 2023 – 2035 is the most contemporary strategy of its type in Australia, having been adopted by Council in July 2023.

The Strategy is based on an Adaptive Management model, making it unique in Australia for its appreciation of MidCoast’s 4100ha of open space and the activities that the community does on that space as a complete system, needing to be managed for emergent challenges. The Strategy includes an Impact Assessment model that assists Council’s land managers in being able to identify impacts on their parks and reserves, and what measures to put in place to meet those challenges. Primary among those challenges is climate change and impacts from over-use and over-visitation.

The Strategy also includes a new set of parks guiding principles, that once again are focused on the “whole system” rather than just human activity.

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