Playspace design and maintenance guidelines
These guidelines have been developed by play planners and designers, as well as council operational staff who are experienced with play design and maintenance.
Review Status:
conservation; fire; water resources; pests; vegetation; climate change; biodiversity
Playspace design and maintenance guidelines
These guidelines have been developed by play planners and designers, as well as council operational staff who are experienced with play design and maintenance.
MCC Policy – Use of Public Open Space by Commercial Fitness Trainers Policy
MCC Procedure – Use of Public Open Space by Commercial Fitness Trainers Policy
These two documents, the Policy, and the Procedure, set out Council’s position on the management of commercial fitness trainers in their use of public open space in MidCoast Council area.
This charming report of 117 pages by biologist Evelyn Elfick commences with a generic explanation of aquatic systems then includes a list of some 89 aquatic invertebrates identified during a survey, with information and original drawings for each one. Hotel Creek is in the Chichester State Forest adjacent to Barrington Tops National Park in central New South Wales.
Although the title is Aquatic Insects of the Chichester State Forest, the list of fauna includes one fish (a gudgeon) and several molluscs, crustaceans and other invertebrates that are not insects.
The introductory ~20 pages could form a useful introduction to aquatic systems for secondary-level teachers as it is not site-specific.
Evelyn Elfick has supplied the following explanation by way of background:
“While studying as an undergraduate at the University of New England, I started collecting for a visiting lecturer from the USA. Her PhD was on freshwater aquatic insects and I collected ephemeroptera [mayflies] from rivers and streams from the South Coast at Bega to just north of the Hunter.
“I became so interested in the diversity of the then “unpolluted” freshwater systems that I decided to continue and chose Burra Creek as the main study area. This booklet was originally produced in A5 format to be used as a field guide for people working in the area.”
Evelyn may be contacted via elfick AT SYMBOL bigpond.com.
This two-page tour guide is interesting for the description of some of the ecological features including the native grassland.
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.
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.
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.
This report, dated September 1993, is entitled Greater Planning Certainty for Queensland’s Wood Products Industry Based on Crown Native Forests.
The report “reflects the Government’s undertakings as a signatory of the National Forest Policy
Statement to provide planning certainty for wood processors obtaining raw materials from Crown native forest.
“This policy will achieve several important objectives.
“It will allow the Government, through the Departments of Primary Industries and Environment and Heritage, to assess the State’s native forest resources and determine the best possible use of those resources for the communities of Queensland.
“It will establish guidelines for the continued ecologically sustainable management of our native forests.
“It will provide a stable investment environment in which the timber industry can become more competitive, dynamic and value-adding.
“It will also minimise conflicts within the community over the uses which can be made of native forest areas, by involving community groups in the decision-making process.”
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.