This booklet, designated as Miscellaneous Publication No. 8, by the Forests Commission of Victoria, dated 1961, contains descriptions of the main vegetation types as well as descriptions of the most prominent species.
Review Status: Pending
This booklet, designated as Miscellaneous Publication No. 8, by the Forests Commission of Victoria, dated 1961, contains descriptions of the main vegetation types as well as descriptions of the most prominent species.
This small booklet was produced in 1976 by a team led by John Landy, one-time Technical Officer for the fledgling National Parks Authority and later Governor of Victoria, under the auspices of the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science (Victorian Branch).
It was launched in the rooms of the Royal Society of Victoria.
Dr Phil Day was a lawyer and planner with top-level expertise in decentralisation of urban development, land valuation and land value taxation. These fields of speciality are relevant to the securing of public open space in localities where residential development is expanding. A brief account of his career appears in Wikipedia.
This page is under construction. It will include an archive of Dr Day’s writings and records of the influence he has had in planning policy.
Miscellaneous speeches and articles – Volume 1.
DEVELOPMENT CONTROL BONUSES: WHY NOT? Phil Day and David Perkins 1984.
APPROACHING HIGH NOON? – on qualifications and education of planners. P.D. Day 1986.
TAXING LAND OR INCOMES? – P.D. Day three articles, c.1987.
Brisbane- The Good, The Bad and the Ugly – speech to Brisbane Development Association, 28 March 1985. Optimised down to 15.4 MB to reduce size.
PLANNING IN CRISIS – a rational polemic against the Integrated Planning Act 1997. This paper is dated 17 June 2001.
Planning Instruments: Evolution of Queensland’s Planning System: Planning Instruments and Processes. Dr Day has annotated the margin that this 19 page paper was commissioned by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Planting, sometime in the 1990s.
Valuing Green Space – 2 April 2001, with a note in the margin that it was intended for journalist Phil Dickie.
This three-pager lists the key milestones in the administration of Victoria’s national parks from the declaration of the National Parks Act in 1956 to 1982. It includes lists of key personnel.
This was the first master plan prepared for metropolitan parks by the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works for many years. The period from 1974 when Jells Park was developed until about 1986 was an era of intensive land improvements and capital works, much conducted by Parks staff. This plan was approved in principle but published with an invitation for a final round of public comment. Dated September 1987.
This Discussion Paper, probably authored by Robert Preston, of uncertain date unpicks the concepts of landscape and scenery along with some other relevant attributes. It includes a substantial list of government documents and also an annotated bibliography.
The paper was prepared for Steve MacDonald, Manager of the Queensland Regional Landscape Strategy office from 1995-2012 and is likely to have been written in 2008 or 2009.
An official publication dated ten years later, 2 July 2018, and entitled Determining scenic preference in the coastal zone: Guideline for coastal development is orientated towards the implementation of State Planning Policy.
A hotlink within this document to South East Queensland Regional Plan 2005–2026 Implementation Guideline No. 8: Identifying and protecting scenic amenity values doesn’t seem to work, but the Guideline has been captured by PaRC. Click here.
Tread Lightly! (Australia) was a community organisation established to promote responsible use of outdoor recreation sites by users. Queensland public servant Neil Ames has assembled this narrative, based upon recollections of the late John Wood, who was president for 10 years.
The model came from the United States where Tread Lightly (US) is still very alive and functional: see https://www.treadlightly.org/. Its mission has been “Promoting responsible recreation through stewardship, education and communication. Plus, we get out there and live it.” Tread Lightly (US) originated from the US Forest Service which wanted to partner with recreational users of forests to minimise recreation-related impacts resulting from all types of outdoor activities including off-road vehicles (mountain biking, bushwalking, camping, fishing, hunting etc).
Jan and Ivan Scudamore introduced the program into Australia in the early 1990s. Jan was Executive Officer of Tread Lightly (Australia) from its inception and the driving force. Tread Lightly (Australia) had a board and three chairmen over the ~10 years of operation, namely Brian Woodward, Rob Seymore and John Wood. Jan was also a board member of Tread Lightly (USA) and acquired a quantity of educational, training, promotional, research, management and operational material from the US Forest Service and the Off Highway Vehicle Association of USA.
Eventually it was decided to close Tread Lightly (Australia) down due to lack of financial support.
After an interregnum in the offices of Sport and Recreation Queensland based in Toowoomba, the collection of physical resources was secured by PaRC and many items scanned. The materials are not saved in a single digital location in the library, as the library is based on a keyword search engine, but the items that are not copyright are now accessible to all.
John Grieg authored a 17-page paper to the 10th Annual Conference entitled Appropriate Use of the National Parks System – An Off-Road Vehicle Users Perspective, dated 1987.
A common dilemma facing the managers of public parks and reserves is whether to allow community groups or commercial firms to occupy public land, which is often prime real estate, in central and busy locations; and if so, on what terms.
The dilemma often surfaces in the form of questions like:
In 1983-84 (as well as other times of course), the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works grappled with this question as it progressed the development of the metropolitan parks along the river valleys – Dandenong Creek, Yarra Valley, Maribyrnong River. This five-page draft policy fell off the back of a truck into PaRC’s hands. Appended to it is an extract from the earlier Board minutes leading to the draft policy.
During the 1990s the Department of Lands in Queensland also developed policy on the secondary use of what was there called “trust land”. The benchmark document was a kit for the trustees of reserved land, including analysis of the concepts of “commerciality” and “exclusivity”. A modern guideline drawing on these roots, and dated 24 April 2024, is entitled Guideline for State, Statutory Body and Local Government Trustees: Managing actions consistent and inconsistent with the purpose of trust land.
PaRC extends a warm invitation to all practitioners to submit examples of similar policies from their own jurisdiction for uploading here.
In the late 1980s an initiative called “Greening Port Moresby” was run by the National Capital Interim District Commission, the provincial government for the capital city of Papua New Guinea. It was run by the Parks, Gardens and Sports Branch. Certificates were printed with the intention of enrolling members of the public, to increase their awareness of the need to plant trees and flowers, reduce rubbish and minimise burning of the grasslands around the city. No register was kept and the initiative did not gain much traction.
As one tool towards the Greening objective, the Parks Superintendent ran a course in horticulture for his staff. The staff were mostly grass roots workers, although some had completed Grade 10.
In 1990 the National Trust (Victoria) established an initiative called “Save the Bush” with the objective of bush regeneration by trained operatives. PaRC has secured the documents describing the establishment of the project, the training sessions and the initial contracts.
The material has been split into two files, one with pages 1-26 (13.3 MB) and the other with pages 27-64 (28.5 MB), to aid uploading.
The contract documentation may be useful to any parks supervisor contemplating training their own staff.
PaRC invites anyone associated with the National Trust program to send a review or a narrative on their experience.