The first two editions of the magazine published by the Department of Environment and Conservation Queensland – first issue June 1989 and second issue October 1989.
Review Status: Pending
The first two editions of the magazine published by the Department of Environment and Conservation Queensland – first issue June 1989 and second issue October 1989.
A series of coloured leaflets listing the parks at various dates:
South-East Queensland June 1975
South Coastal Queensland 1979 and 1982
Central Coastal Queensland 1979 and 1982
North Coastal Queensland 1978 and 1982
Cape York 1980 and 1982
Southern Inland Queensland 1982
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.
The Tread Lightly Education Kit (67 MB) that came into PaRC’s possession consists of a folder containing a copy of the leaflet, the Teachers Guide and Data Sheets.
A leaflet sponsored by the Victorian Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and dated 1993.
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.
This 73-page report, the proceedings of a one-day seminar held by Australian Environmental Studies, The Institute of Applied Environmental Research, Griffith University, Queensland in December 1990 is titled Sustaining the Future and subtitled Urban Waste and Resource Strategies: Beyond 2000.
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. His extensive writings on land value taxation also have high-order – and contemporary – relevance to the shape of our cities. A brief account of his career appears in Wikipedia.
This page will come to include an archive of Dr Day’s writings and records of the influence he has had in planning policy. PaRC thanks his son Michael Day for making his professional papers available for scanning and PaRC team member Ron Turner for the painstaking task of scanning.
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.
The Big Party Syndrome: A Study of the Impact of Special Events and Inner Urban Change in Brisbane.
Speech notes on “People in the Cities“.
Miscellaneous lectures and articles, including papers on:
Tucked along Neurum Creek in the hinterland of Woodford, South-east Queensland, is a privately-owned park of 127 hectares and 1.5 km of creek frontage. Now known as Neurum Creek Bush Retreat, 268 Rasmussen Road, Mount Archer, Queensland, 4514, it was formerly owned and developed by the late David Marlow, a scientist and environmentalist as Mt Archer Adventures. Not to be confused with the Mt Archer National Park near Rockhampton or the Neurum Creek Park nearby, upstream within the National Park.
David, who lacked a business partner to share the workload, surrendered the property prior to completing its development. He was a dog lover (his speciality was American spaniels) and wanted to create a peaceful, open space venue for outdoor recreation without the regulatory constraints of a national park and in particular with the freedom for other dog lovers to bring their pets.
The attached extract from his website explains his vision. David’s health deteriorated until he passed away in February 2025. Vale David Marlow.
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“.
This two-page tour guide is interesting for the description of some of the ecological features including the native grassland.
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 public 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.
In addition, the report prepared for internal purposes is also reproduced here to explain the background.
PaRC invites anyone associated with this National Trust program to send a review or a narrative on their experience.
One of the objectives of PaRC is to make available course notes and curricula for teachers in parks and leisure subjects at all levels, from primary to postgraduate. We appeal to teachers, tutors and lecturers to send us materials which are either out of copyright or can be published under Creative Commons conditions with copyright approval.
The attached proposal dated 1985 for a course in urban horticulture has been found in the archives and no doubt describes only one of many related courses that are now or have been presented in one state or another. We don’t pretend that it is a reliable guide to modern education in this field. We publish it here by way of a challenge to teachers and lecturers to send us better material!
This paper has been scanned and edited to de-identify the name of the institution concerned and the personnel.
This paper is a transcript of a talk on ABC Radio on 6 March 1977 By Professor Polakowski, Visiting Professor at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Environmental Studies.
This scan of the proceedings of the Sport and Recreation Division’s 1995 conference is lacking pages 62-70, 138, 139, 148, 149, 188, 189, 250 and 251. (42.1 MB).
Leisure management is the means by which organisations manipulate their resources to deliver leisure programs, facilities and services to stakeholders and the general community. The programs, facilities and services fall within the range of leisure, recreation, sport, tourism and events industry, within the mixed economy of leisure provided by government, non-profit, commercial organisations and households.
Leisure management has evolved over the decades to steadily increase the range of responsibilities and tasks required to deliver leisure programs, facilities and services. Leisure management books have covered fundamental responsibilities such as planning, delivery, management and control of services. Some recent publications also address quality and performance management, community planning, accountability, partnerships, inclusion of diversity in the community and workplace competency-based management, personnel practices, project management and allocation of resources. Leisure management has been explained as a focus on the ‘what’ and the ‘who’. The ‘what’ relates to the leisure organisation’s understanding of the key leisure concepts, how organisations function and manipulate their resources to deliver programs, facilities and services. The ‘who’ relates to the understanding of leisure service consumers and key stakeholders.
Leisure management is more than working to achieve effective and efficient programs, facilities and services. Often leisure projects are designed to address issues of inequality, access and to help make the world a better place based on leisure’s contribution to a community’s quality of life.
The Leisure Management Special Interest Group (LM SIG) of the World Leisure Organisation (www.worldleisure.org) aims to articulate and document the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of delivering leisure experiences. It is co-led by Dr. John R Tower, Honorary Fellow, Victoria University Melbourne; and Dr Jo An Zimmermann-Somoza, Associate Professor, Texas State University. The LM SIG It aims to encourage contributions to leisure management scholarship and sharing of best practice activities that contribute to excellent leisure experiences.
Recordings of a series of leisure management webinars commencing in 2021 are available online:
Designing Leisure Experiences – December 2021
Serious Leisure in Practice – April 2022
Crisis Preparedness – June 2022
Managing Safe Places – September 2022
Public Leisure Management for Social Transformation – April 2023
Future of Public Sector Leisure – August 2023
Building Community through Leisure Programs and Services for Older Adults – November 2023
Embracing Digital Horizons in Leisure – April 2024
Insights from tourism management for community leisure management – August 2024
Working with leisure consultants: Enhancing effective collaboration – November 2024.
Links to LM SIG webinars in future may be provided as they become available. Some webinars are available in Spanish and Portuguese. They are used internationally as teaching resources.
These two papers from 1980 (one file) outline the justification for a Sport and Recreation Officer in Noosa Shire and sketch the outline of a position description/role statement.
(Disregard the “not found” sticker on the cover. PaRC”s Librarian was noting that she could not find another copy online)..
We have attempted a conversion of the document to Word so that users could extract text for their own work, but the conversion has been imperfect.
This paper is an extract from the Proceedings of the New Zealand Recreation Association Conference, Mt Cook, New Zealand 1995, pp 61-71. “Mountain Biking Impacts and Rider Preferences” by Gordon Cessford, Science and Research Division, Department of Conservation, Wellington, New Zealand.
A review of impacts from mountain biking concludes: that the physical impacts of mountain biking are not a good basis for decisions about allowing access, that the actual environmental impact and safety hazards associated with mountain biking may be less than perceived by other track users, and that the focus needs to be on recreation conflict issues. A survey of riders found that they displayed a diversity of setting and experience preferences, and many of these changed in importance with riding experience. Natural settings, challenging riding, variety, and
opportunities for excitement and speed were important components for most riders. From these results, recommendations for management of mountain biking and associated research are made.
People may ask why PaRC publishes documents written a couple of decades ago dredged up from various private and public collections. Partly this is because some of these old reports and old programs will be useful source material for historians and researchers; partly because they can be cut and pasted into modern documents.
We believe that many modern practitioners are let loose in their local government or departmental office without sufficient mentoring, given the turmoil and turnover in the state and national public services. But we ask PaRC readers to send us modern editions where old documents have been superseded.
SportsFun is a guide to making sports activities appealing.
The rear cover includes credits and copyright statement.
The State Mountain Bike Plan – Mt Lofty Ranges Region 2001-2005 (24.5 MB) was published by the Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing in October 2001.
See also Adelaide Hills Bicycle Plan 2006.
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.
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.