This week I was honoured to visit around fifty amazing trees (of course, always there are more, but I tend to focus on around fifty each trip), on Tuesday 15-07-25, firstly at the Rubie Thomson Park in Northcote, and then at the Fairfield Park and Boathouse, including the Fairfield Park Amphitheatre Complex.
It was a bit of an overcast day, but as the walk went on, my partner and I enjoyed a bit of sunshine as we explored some new terrain. I had noticed the Rubie Thomson Park when I drove past a couple of days before, and thought to myself, ‘I need to check those trees out!’ So here we were, and I was rewarded for the effort. What a lovely park! It is set out really nicely, providing an interesting area for anyone to enjoy, including families with children, as there are great playground facilities here, especially for toddlers and preschoolers, who can also play with some trucks in the sandpit that are there to share (I assume – forgive me if they aren’t there when you go as I’m making a bit of an assumption).
But importantly, for all the tree lovers, the trees in the park are very beautiful. There are lots of eucalyptus, larger She-oaks, Maleluecas and others, and some interesting plaques about the Northcote Youth Mural, which was ‘commissioned by the Northcote City Council to Celebrate the 19987 International Year of Youth’, and designed by artist Megan Evans, who had spent some months talking with a ‘wide range of local young people from diverse backgrounds.’ (For more information about Megan Evans, see this blog post by Mark Holsworth (March 6, 2021, ‘Black Mark Melbourne arts and culture critic’ https://melbourneartcritic.wordpress.com/2021/03/06/megan-evans-and-murals-in-northcote/ (viewed 20/07/25), and read the information on the photograph of the plaque in Rubie Park below.
We also had a walk around the nearby streets, and a standout were the street trees, I think London Plane trees, which have adapted in a particularly flamboyant fashion to survive their regular pruning away from power lines. I am quite interested to see how trees adapt to this, they are often weakened from the process, but these trees seem very solid and have spread widely to accommodate the wires.
After the Rubie Thomson Park, we drove over to the Fairfield Park and had a fabulous walk around the boathouse and Amphitheatre area. I had not been here before, and it was fabulous! The Amphitheatre was built in the late 1980s, to represent ‘the significance of Greek Australians in Victoria’s History’, and ‘designed for bilingual theatre productions. According to the Victoria Heritage Council plaque, it was also ‘inspired by the ancient amphitheatre of Epidaurus.’
The stand-out for me was the colour of the bluestone it was built from, and how it appeared as a backdrop to the leaves that had fallen from the nearby deciduous trees.
Further over towards the beautiful Yarra Birrarung River, was a very interesting pipe bridge, the Fairfield Pipe Bridge. According to information on the Darebin Library Website, https://libraries.darebin.vic.gov.au/Darebinheritage/places/bridges/fairfieldpipebridge (viewed 20/07/25), the bridge was built in 1878 to carry water from the Yan Yean Reservoir to Kew. In 1934, the bridge was washed away in floods, and a new pipe bridge built close to site of the original bridge. (Information was drawn from Lacey, Geoff (2004) ‘Still glides the stream: the natural history of the Yarra from Heidelberg to Yarra Bend’, Melbourne Scholarly Publishing.
The photographs that I liked the most, looking back at them today, picture the juxtaposition of the pipe bridge with the stunning bush background, the white trunked eucalypts and the green leaves, and the ripples on the river. Overall, I enjoyed my walks today and would recommend a visit to both areas explored.
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