By Bryn Jones
Healesville is blessed with attractive, long-established public parks and gardens, enjoyed by generations of tourists and ‘locals’ alike.
In 1865 Government-Surveyor, George McDonald set aside a large area, centrally located, designated as ‘Recreation Reserve’ and now known as Queens Park. Although essentially still a park, with magnificent trees, shrubs, a rose garden and a creek forming its eastern fringe, it now also houses many recreational and sporting facilities.
As early as 1901 its amenities were recognised beyond Healesville when 4000 Post Office employees and their families, travelling in 7 special trains, spent their annual ‘trade picnic’ there. The Healesville Golf Club played its early years on a part of the park with members having to contend with grazing cows, tussocky grass, an uneven surface and, in winter months, very swampy surfaces. Visitors can be assured that no such hardships will now confront them!
By far the most extensive park is Maroondah Reservoir Park. The dam wall, 41 metres high, offers a scenic lookout to the reservoir lake itself and the spectacular spillway’s waters cascading into the river below. The work on the dam began in 1920 and was completed seven years later. The park area contains an extensive array of trees – including towering native eucalypts and many exotic deciduous specimens – and flower beds, lawn areas, winding walks and a great variety of bird life. Although it experienced in recent years the loss of many well-established trees from storms and wild weather as well as a considerable reduction in garden maintenance staff, volunteers are working hard and successfully to restore some of its former botanical glory. Maroondah Reservoir Park is still a very attractive place to visit in its natural and rather spectacular setting.
Badger Weir Park and Donnelly’s Weir replete with creeks, weirs, bush walks and extensive treed areas on Healesville’s outer areas are popular spots for visitors who may be able to enjoy the presence in Badger Weir Park particularly of goannas, rosellas, other wildlife and even lyre birds. Badger Weir Park suffered severe damage in the wild storms of 2016 but after more than two years work the park and infrastructure are fully restored and again open to the public.
Healesville’s public parks and gardens provide a backdrop to the town’s attractive setting, nestling at the foothills of the Great Dividing Range – a far cry from one traveller’s description in its earliest stage in 1865 as ‘a township consisting of four or five shanties in the course of being erected – a detestable hole in which nothing to drink was to be had except gin, and nothing to eat but damper’!
