federal, state and local plans and policy; legislation and regulations; planning guidelines; tenure administration; land use
This is an important report, dated about 1973, explaining the intentions of the benchmark 1971 legislation the State and Regional Planning and Development, Public Works Organization and Environmental Control Act 1971-1973.
it is an important statement of the views of the Queensland Government of the day about regional land use planning, development planning, consultation and coordination. Published by the Office of the Coordinator-General.
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 of members) 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!
A document entitled “Metropolitan Park Policies – Adopted 14.4.75” and dated May 1983 has survived; unclear whether it was original or a 1983 revision.
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“.
From its first establishment, PaRC has focused on parks, open space and ‘passive’ recreation, without aspiring to cover active sports, because of the existence of the Australian Clearinghouse for Sport. Over the years, the Clearinghouse has increased the range of valuable knowledge materials that are freely available on its Internet page and PaRC’s current policy is not to duplicate those materials. (By way of exception, we have been re-publishing some legacy documents on sport that have otherwise disappeared from public view).
The December 2024 Newsletter of Parks and Leisure Australia has drawn to attention a series of definitions of sport and related concepts published on the website of the Clearinghouse and has prompted us to make another exception, given their likely value to the entire sports and recreation sector. We have extracted those definitions and place them here in durable PDF format as a benchmark document What is Sport?, one that may reach a different audience and does not depend on an external hotlink.
This set of definitions nicely complements several other documents in PaRC:
Dictionary of key terms, including Western Australia’s 2012 Classification Framework for Public Open Space.
Definitions for natural resource planning and management
Definitions of outdoor recreation, including Outdoor Recreation: Key Concepts, Trends, Issues and Stakeholders – a 1999 in-service training manual by Queensland’s Department of Tourism, Sport and Racing.
Melbourne – metropolitan parks and waterways system evolution ……… Continue Reading
More than 25 years after the creation of a regional open space network was recommended in the SEQ2001 Regional Plan, South East Queensland does not have a regional park system or any coordinated network of recreational open space worth the name. The narrative of what-might-have-been is a story of opportunities lost, at least three times over.
Purlingbrook Falls adjacent to the rainforest purchased under ROSS in 1994 – G. Edwards
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.
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.
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.
Prompted by an enquiry from the Leisure Management Special Interest Group of the World Leisure Organization, I have burrowed into the PaRC dungeons and have found the document dated 2020 that explains the 14 categories that PaRC adopted to structure its material. The document explains the categories by example rather than by definition. The categories arose from a roundtable session with the then Librarian Ann Huthwaite and Coordinator John Rush. After more than four years’ experience of assigning categories to posts/articles, it’s worth reviewing the categorisation which might well be adopted by practitioners for other policy and research purposes. I’ll make five observations.
1. Any attempt to classify material faces three broad options: to erect a predetermined structure and fit materials into those categories; or to avoid assigning categories and to rely upon keywords to find material; or to lodge items in chronological order (date) to find material. PaRC adopts both predetermined categories and keywords but not date. (Date is a separate descriptor). A disadvantage of a system based upon predetermined categories is that once established, they are difficult to amend. If a new category is added, for example, then all previous entries need to be searched to see if they belong in the new category rather than the previously assigned one.
2. Number of categories is a significant determinant of the system. PaRC has adopted only 14 categories – PaRC avoided having dozens of detailed categories, as that would have made the assignment of categories more difficult. However, as the number of items lodged rises, the value of broad categories fades somewhat because there are now hundreds of documents in some of the categories. PaRC contributors should minimise the number of categories that they tick. In practice, keywords has become the main method of finding material, in both the Document Library and Narratives websites. Still, the categorisation will be useful for some purposes and in my view is sufficiently robust to commend it.
3. An issue with categorisation is that if several different contributors are applying the categorisation independently, they can interpret some a little differently and therefore their categorisations can drift apart. Some terms such as “planning” are ambiguous anyway. Probably the best remedy for that is for the contributors to go back from time to time and read the description to recalibrate their understanding.
Reading the examples in the attached document indicates that a document entitled “Swamp Gully Park Management Plan” needs to be assigned to only one category, which is ” Open space and recreation areas”. The category of “Management” is really about the principles of management practice, and the category of “Planning” for the procedural meanings of the term and materials about the planning regime for that locality.
4. Many documents will lie in several categories. There is no easy solution to that; it’s inherent in any filing system, and modern search engines should be able to cope so long as adequate keywords are applied to the metadata.
5. From an internationalist perspective, the geographical focus for PaRC is quite circumscribed, being Australia, New Zealand and the Western Pacific Islands. PaRC policy is to include very little material from international sources, perhaps a benchmark document here and there. But place is important and so there is a separate categorisation for geographic location – Australia as a whole, the Australian states individually, New Zealand and the Western Pacific Islands. This is a second classification system assigned in parallel to (or superimposed upon) the main subject categories.
Now here is an exercise for readers who have followed this far: Has this post been assigned to the most appropriate category? Feedback via the LinkedIn account!
Geoff Edwards
5 February 2025
Human well-being is central to the worldview of parks and leisure people, it’s a, and perhaps THE primary purpose of parks and leisure activities and facilities. So there is likely to be wide interest in a series of thought pieces being published in The Mandarin, a national online newsletter of public administration, under the aegis of the Royal Societies of Australia.
The series has its origin in a conviction by the scientist members of The Royal Society of Queensland that the knowledge held by scientists and medicos about human health and well-being is not being adequately reflected in national public policy and there is a need for public advocacy of scientific insights to better inform policy settings in health, education, and a range of other portfolios.
Some of the columns published to date don’t overlap much with the interests of parks and leisure people (speaking generally), but some will resonate strongly with readers of this website:
Articles 3-7 will be of particular interest to operational managers who struggle to implement good ideas: they explain that there are five major ingredients to a successful program or project, and the absence of any of the one can be fatal to success.
The Mandarin is tagging the articles and the full series can be accessed by clicking on this link. The parent website, a page under the Royal Societies of Australia banner, is being developed as a knowledge hub on the subject.
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Most of the articles published to date have been written by one author, but the project envisages contributions from a range of people with expertise. Any parks or leisure practitioner who would like to write a column of about 1000 words on a well-being subject of their choice is warmly invited to contact the Coordinator via health AT SYMBOL royalsocietyqld.org.au or the secretary of PaRC via secretary AT SYMBOL parcaustralia.com.au.
Many parks people will be highly sensitive to the need to protect green space within and around areas of urban settlement. This has long been understood by town planners and by the parks and recreation officers of local governments. However, in the contemporary push for densification of urban development, this deeply held principle is being set aside as lot sizes shrink and vacant government land is being re-described as “under-performing” and targeted for blocks of flats. Parks and recreation people who have some anecdotes to share can write for PaRC. Those with more policy-orientated advocacy to share can write for The Mandarin. Those with a social media aptitude are warmly invited to join the LinkedIn account.
Please see the Call for Authors for details of style and format.
