Wednesday, 9 February 2022

Wattle Park facility upgrades

Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (19:03): (6197) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and the action I seek is for the minister to join constituents of my electorate for an online discussion about the upgrades to Wattle Park. Wattle Park is a very special place to the people of my community. In 2018, during the campaign, the Premier and I announced a $4.3 million investment in Wattle Park to replace the tired old playground and create a new Tan-style running track. In 2020 and 2021 Parks Victoria, despite the challenges of the pandemic, undertook two rounds of public consultation, taking on board community feedback on what our community really wanted to see from these new facilities. And now in 2022 the designs have been released and the upgrades are set to be delivered this year as promised.

As I have said before in this place, Wattle Park is something of an oasis hidden in Melbourne’s metropolitan eastern suburbs. Vast sections of the park remain as native bushland, with remnant vegetation, including acacia wattle and eucalyptus. The area is currently listed as having 112 species of birds, including the Australian magpie of course but also the kookaburra and the sulphur-crested cockatoo. There are 11 species of mammals, including possums and bats, and five reptile species, including skinks and geckos.

The community feels very strongly about protecting the natural environment at Wattle Park as well as its history, and the park is rich with many historical structures and items that were installed over the course of the last century. In the 1920s Wattle Park developed a very strong theme around transport thanks to its ownership by the Hawthorn Tramways Trust. Former materials from tramway infrastructure were repurposed as picnic tables, former rail cables were used for fencing, retired W-class trams were converted into picnic shelters and other materials were used in the construction of buildings such as the chalet and the curator’s cottage. The park also took on historical significance as a war memorial in 1933 when a former soldier in the World War I 24th battalion planted a seedling from a pine cone he had collected from the Lone Pine at Gallipoli, one of the few directly descended from the Lone Pine still existing in Australia. In the 1950s a stone clocktower was constructed adjacent to that Lone Pine seedling, dedicated to a soldier who fell in World War I.

My community has a strong connection to Wattle Park, to its flora, fauna and history. Designs for this redevelopment have received overwhelming support, likely owing to the well-attended engagement sessions and high volume of surveys completed offering such terrific feedback over the course of the journey. There will be a fantastic new playground. It will have shapes and play elements that fit the natural setting and look like natural animals and plants, and rocks and natural materials will feature throughout. I look forward to discussing the project with the minister and my constituents.