On Saturday, I decided that I needed to get out of the house for a bit and go for a walk to get some fresh air and sunshine. I decided to go a bit further afield than usual and took myself off to Sydney Park (around 40 acres in size), which is located in the inner city suburb of Alexandria.
The park has a history of various uses before becoming the park that we see today. Before European settlement of Australia, the north-west area of the of the park that sits on shale was covered in a forest of turpentine and ironbark trees. Over the south-east of the park, on the Botany sands, sat heath, swamps and marshes that were along the banks of Sheas Creek.
After European settlement, gardening did occur on the site for a while. This activity was overtaken by brick, pottery and tile production from the nineteenth century, due to the abundance of clay in the area. The last brickworks in the area shut down in 1983.
From 1948, the deep clay pits formed during the days of the brickwork began being used as a municipal waste dump, which closed down in 1976. Once closed, the tip was covered with a layer of soil and building rubble to allow the creation of the park to begin. In other areas of the park, there was a gas storage area, manufacturing and many warehouses.
Since 1991, Sydney Park has existed as a public park that is very well used by locals, and probably people from further away like me. The park has plenty of open grassed areas, the Alan Davidson oval (for cricket and Australian rules football), the chimneys of old brick kilns and and wetland habitat area that I was most interested in seeing.
The wetlands were originally created to for a few reasons that include improving water quality, providing irrigation water for the park and to prevent flooding. Water for these wetlands comes from the streets surrounding the park, that are filtered through various natural filtration swales and pollutant traps before entering the wetlands. Several of the wetland areas has these channel structures in, which is an artwork installation by Jennifer Turpin and Michaeli Crawford. I quite like the contrast between the natural and man-made water channels.
I am going to talk a bit more about the wetlands here in another post, but today I want to show you why I really enjoyed my walk around this area of Sydney Park as I found it a lovely place to spend time on a sunny morning.
There are lots of birds in the wetlands, busy feeding like this dusky moorhen wading around feeding.
I enjoyed walking around through the park seeing views across the water. There are many such areas around the wetland area.
There are also areas where there aren’t that many views, apart from the immediate surroundings of plants, like where these bulrushes sit. Here, it is a little more secluded and quiet.
Where these areas of stepping stones are, was a place where dogs loves playing around in the shallow water. It did look like fun!
I then came across another area of water where there were lots of different species of birds feeding and enjoying the sun. My favourite was definitely this lovely black swan. I spent ages in this area watching the birds swimming, feeding and ibis arguing in the trees.
On walking a little further, I saw one of my favourite banksias, the coast banksia, more information can be found here.
I saw this ibis (Threskiornis Moluccan) preening itself, and one of the few that were quiet as I was walking around.
After I had finished my walk around the wetlands area, I enjoyed walking through the rest of the park. On top of one of the hills, I got a good view of the airport. I knew I was close to the airport all morning, as I could hear and see the planes flying over, but didn’t realise I would get such a good view.
The wetland area of Sydney Park is a lovely spot to spend some time, as is the whole of the park to be honest. There is changing scenery, wildlife and plenty of space. On my visit, the whole park was busy with people out enjoying their weekend. It was a very pleasant morning out. At some point I will be back for another visit.