Wattle Park

About

Wattle Park is a 41-hectare (100-acre) urban park in Burwood, a suburb of Melbourne, in Victoria, Australia. It is known for its plantation of 12,000 wattle trees. Maintained by Parks Victoria, the park provides public open space for recreation, as well as sporting facilities, and a wedding and function venue. Named in honour of Australia's proposed national floral emblem, the Golden Wattle, the park was established by the Hawthorn Tramway Trust in 1917 and an ongoing connection is maintained with Melbourne's tramways. A large proportion of Wattle Park was added to the Victorian Heritage Register on 1 April 1992. The park is located on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurung people.

Wattle Park is located in the Melbourne suburb of Burwood within the City of Whitehorse local government area, approximately 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) east of the Melbourne central business district. Facilities include two children's playgrounds, barbecues, tables and seats, public toilets, a war memorial clocktower, stables, a lily pond, sculptures and Indigenous interpretive elements, a large grassed sports oval, a nine-hole public golf course and tennis courts with cafe, two heritage 'W' class Melbourne trams offer shelter, walking tracks through the bush and a perimeter track, and the Wattle Park Chalet – a wedding and function centre. Dogs are permitted in the park on a lead.

The Wattle Park Chalet was built in 1928 as a tea-house and function venue. It is an elegant structure in the rustic Tudor style of English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. The Wattle Park Chalet was designed by Alan Monsborough, an architect employed by the Melbourne & Metropolitan Tramways Board, and is located at the centre of Wattle Park. The timber beams used for building the chalet were recycled from other, earlier structures; the roof slates came from the former Yarra Bend Asylum ; the bricks came from cable tram engine-house chimneys; and the stonework was recycled from derelict drystone walls. The front porch was added later, in 1937.

The chalet is believed to be the oldest continuously running wedding venue in Melbourne; [ citation needed ] and is an example of a building constructed by a public utility, largely from recycled materials.

The construction of the chalet involved several sub-contractors. Unions stopped construction work on 7 March 1928, demanding that all workers on the site be paid at construction industry rates, rather than the 'mixed rate' of tramways workers. Work resumed approximately four weeks later at the same pay rate but on the understanding that the issue would be revisited.

Two smaller single-storey wings branch off the chalet's main hall. The west wing originally contained the caretaker's residence, and the east wing contained the kitchen and kiosk. Between the wings was a paved courtyard. The paving was recycled from the former tramway engine house on Alexandra Avenue and old cable tram sheds.

A large proportion of the park is recorded as a registered place by Heritage Victoria, added in 1992 to the statutory Victorian Heritage Register, and the National Trust of Australia also added the park complex, including the Chalet and associated structures, to its non-statutory heritage list.

The " Lone Pine " tree growing near the main carpark is listed on the National Trust's Significant Tree Register, being one of the country's few original Lone Pines. The tree was grown from the seed of a cone collected by one of the Australian soldiers involved in the Gallipoli Campaign from the lone pine tree in Gallipoli, Turkey as a reminder of this notable battle and the ANZACs' involvement in World War I. Planted in Wattle Park on 8 May 1933 at the Trooping of the Colour by the 24th Battalion, the tree was the first Lone Pine to ever be publicly planted as an ANZAC memorial, pre-dating the one planted at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance by a month, and the one at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra by seventeen months.

The park contains areas of indigenous remnant bush land which has been identified as regionally significant on the basis of its high diversity of common native fauna in a suburban environment.

There are recorded to be at least twenty species of butterfly, sixty species of beetle, three species of frogs, bats, skinks, ringtail and brushtail possums. The park's bird life includes kookaburras, rosellas, rainbow lorikeets, galahs, and gang-gang cockatoos.

The Wattle Park Chalet was built in 1928 as a tea-house and function venue. It is an elegant structure in the rustic Tudor style of English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. The Wattle Park Chalet was designed by Alan Monsborough, an architect employed by the Melbourne & Metropolitan Tramways Board, and is located at the centre of Wattle Park. The timber beams used for building the chalet were recycled from other, earlier structures; the roof slates came from the former Yarra Bend Asylum ; the bricks came from cable tram engine-house chimneys; and the stonework was recycled from derelict drystone walls. The front porch was added later, in 1937.

The chalet is believed to be the oldest continuously running wedding venue in Melbourne; [ citation needed ] and is an example of a building constructed by a public utility, largely from recycled materials.

The construction of the chalet involved several sub-contractors. Unions stopped construction work on 7 March 1928, demanding that all workers on the site be paid at construction industry rates, rather than the 'mixed rate' of tramways workers. Work resumed approximately four weeks later at the same pay rate but on the understanding that the issue would be revisited.

Two smaller single-storey wings branch off the chalet's main hall. The west wing originally contained the caretaker's residence, and the east wing contained the kitchen and kiosk. Between the wings was a paved courtyard. The paving was recycled from the former tramway engine house on Alexandra Avenue and old cable tram sheds.

A large proportion of the park is recorded as a registered place by Heritage Victoria, added in 1992 to the statutory Victorian Heritage Register, and the National Trust of Australia also added the park complex, including the Chalet and associated structures, to its non-statutory heritage list.

The " Lone Pine " tree growing near the main carpark is listed on the National Trust's Significant Tree Register, being one of the country's few original Lone Pines. The tree was grown from the seed of a cone collected by one of the Australian soldiers involved in the Gallipoli Campaign from the lone pine tree in Gallipoli, Turkey as a reminder of this notable battle and the ANZACs' involvement in World War I. Planted in Wattle Park on 8 May 1933 at the Trooping of the Colour by the 24th Battalion, the tree was the first Lone Pine to ever be publicly planted as an ANZAC memorial, pre-dating the one planted at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance by a month, and the one at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra by seventeen months.

The park contains areas of indigenous remnant bush land which has been identified as regionally significant on the basis of its high diversity of common native fauna in a suburban environment.

There are recorded to be at least twenty species of butterfly, sixty species of beetle, three species of frogs, bats, skinks, ringtail and brushtail possums. The park's bird life includes kookaburras, rosellas, rainbow lorikeets, galahs, and gang-gang cockatoos.

The park was created when the Hawthorn Tramway Trust (HTT) purchased 55 hectares (137 acres) for A£ 9,000 from Eliza Welch, the widow of the owner of the Ball and Welch department store, under the condition it was to be used as a public park. The site was formerly the location of the residence of Orlando Fenwick, a longstanding councillor for the City of Melbourne who had been Lord Mayor between 1871 and 1872. It was known as Fenwick's Paddock when purchased for approximately A£ 2,500 by Mrs. Welch. Open to the public in December 1916, the park was officially opened on 31 March 1917 when the Governor, Sir Arthur Stanley, planted a Golden Wattle ( Acacia pycnantha ) and named the park. Both the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria and the Victorian Wattle League were influential in encouraging the establishment and development of the park.

Further development of the park was delayed in its early years due to the financial troubles of the HHT, that was subsequently amalgamated into the Melbourne & Metropolitan Tramways Board. Work on electrifying Melbourne's cable tramways caused further delays in the park's development. In 1926 a plantation of 12,000 wattle trees were laid out in a wide belt as a hedge around the outskirts of the area. Lawns and flower beds were installed, winding pathways built, and a small stream trickling through the centre of the park was cleaned, widened, and fringed with willows and poplars. On the north eastern slopes, a natural forest—consisting chiefly of poplars, [ clarification needed ] gums, woolly butt and eucalyptus longifolia —was preserved. Fencing posts around the boundaries of the park were manufactured from old tramway, rails, and a children's joy wheel was made from a former tramway wooden spool for cables.